The article Why All the Robo-Signing? Shedding Light on the Shadow Banking System by Ellen Brown finally provided me with the details about why the Robo-signing is such a big deal. I’ll try to give you a clue as to what is in the article with this teaser.

The robo-signing largely involved assignments of mortgage notes to mortgage servicers or trusts representing the investors who put up the loan money.  Assignment was necessary to give the trusts legal title to the loans.  But assignment was delayed until it was necessary to foreclose on the homes, when it had to be done through the forgery and fraud of robo-signing.  Why had it been delayed?  Why did the banks not assign the mortgages to the trusts when and as required by law?

This has nothing to do with signing documents without reading them as the lame stream press has reported.  This has everything to do with forgery and back dating of documents to perpetrate a fraud that the lame stream media has not bothered to mention.

Having read Ellen Brown’s articles before, I have learned that she has a thing against fractional reserve banking.  I fully expected her to go completely off the rails in this article in her usual way.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that she relegated her prejudice to one small paragraph that can be easily ignored.  It does not affect the veracity of the rest of the article.

This is just the latest minor part of The Boston Globe‘s attacks on Tim Murray, the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.

The Boston Globe obviously has taken a dislike to Tim Murray. Why don’t they just come right out and explain why?

Wasserman may think it is cute to talk about Murray’s troubles while not making any mention of The Boston Globe‘s concerted effort to bring about his downfall, but I, for one, would like to know what is really going on here. What is the ulterior motive?

I have heard a rumor that Steve Grossman, our state treasurer, wants to run for Governor and is trying to torpedo Murray’s career. I have this from a not highly reliable source.

Nation of Change has this surprising editorial, A Crisis in Two Narratives.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this weren’t a new attempt at the far Right, upper 1% to come up with yet another alternative to Keynesian economic prescriptions for what ails the world economy.

You might be entertained by reading the article.  If you don’t immediately see the flaws in this silly argument, let me add my take on what is said in this article.  The quoted sections come from the article.

This has got to be one of the most misguided analyses I have read in ages. I am surprised to see it in Nation of Change.

“But, as Tyler Cowen has argued in his book The Great Stagnation, once these “low-hanging fruit” were plucked, it became much harder to propel growth from the 1970’s onward.”

If, indeed, it became difficult in the 1970s, more likely the problem was the onslaught of wealth transfer from the bottom to the top.

“If this diagnosis is correct, advanced countries need to focus on reviving innovation and productivity growth over the medium term,”

If the diagnosis is correct, how is it possible that making companies able to produce more with less labor (productivity growth) going to put people back to work and increase demand?

The solution is much simpler and far more obvious. Start shifting the wealth back from the wealthy who have been taking it away from the middle class since the 1980s and put it back in the hands of the middle class so that they can put the demand back in the economy.

Reregulate the banks so that we can shift the focus of our economic growth away from money manipulation which destroys jobs, and toward making useful things that require workers. We need to stop the anti-union forces so that those workers share the benefits of productivity gains that they help make possible.

Finally, the government should rebuild infrastructure now while there is slack in the economy and it will be cheapest to do. We are running trillions of dollars of deficit on the infrastructure rebuilding that is necessary to do in any case, and now couldn’t be a better time to do it.

The Nation Of Change has the article, How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’.

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Didn’t the U.S. have a major power shift in the 1930s?  How come the Swedes and Norwegians have managed to keep their shift longer than we did?

I don’t think the following articles are the answer, but they do show how far we have to go.

From Truth Out we have, Wall Street: The Candidate’s Friend.

President Obama may talk a good populist game and even kick some corporate butt when he goes on the attack against Wall Street “fat cats.” Yet he still enjoys the company of bankers — see our “On Democracy” essay on the subject — and for all their grumbling about his policies, the investment community is coming up with significant cash for his re-election; the kind of change they believe in.

The article from Truth Out points to the article from the Sunlight Foundation, Political Contributions from Financial Sector Increased 700% Since 1990.

A new analysis prepared by the Sunlight Foundation shows that wealthy financial sector donors gave $178.2 million in political contributions in 2010, more than ten times what they gave 20 years ago. More than any other industry, individuals from the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector, particularly those in securities and investments, are the key drivers of the overall growth of elite donors, or what Sunlight calls The Political One Percent of the One Percent.

I thought the above is a better title than The Herald News of Fall River, MA used, Senate candidate with Salem ties plans her election year.

I found the following quote in the article about Marisa DeFranco who is running against Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

DeFranco also took issue with some of the tough talk Warren had delivered about her stance toward Iran.

“I have clients, through my law practice, in Iran,” DeFranco said. “I have an on-the-ground perspective on what’s happening there. When Elizabeth Warren says that ‘nothing is off the table’ when it comes to dealing with Iran, to be blunt I think that’s reckless and ignorant. Saber rattling does nothing to help the situation there. Any action we took would have civilian casualties, and we couldn’t have a limited engagement because of Iran’s ties with Russia and China. There has to be a better way to deal with countries with whom we have serious problems in the 21st century.”

I may be one of the few other people in Massachusetts that finds her statements about Iran to be more sensible than those of Elizabeth Warren (or Scott Brown for that matter).  It may not win her votes in Massachusetts.  However, I don’t want a tough talking Senator who will help get us into a war with Iran to satisfy the oil companies’ need to control Iranian oil.  I want a Senator that can calmly assess the situation and deal diplomatically with Iran.

The current administration of our country had to bribe the head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reinterpret the agency’s data to make the case that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat.

Even our own CIA knows that there is no current or imminent threat of nuclear weapons in Iran.  Yet, knowing this, President Obama keeps rattling sabers and pressing for sanctions against Iran. I am waiting for Obama to quote the immortal words of Condoleezza Rice, “But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

If you use the search box above to search this blog on the topic of Iran, here are a few of the items you will find.

• Seymour Hersh: Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat, U.S. Could Be Headed for Iraq Redux
• IAEA Iran Report Spins Intelligence
• Seymour Hersh: Propaganda Used Ahead of Iraq War Is Now Being Reused over Iran’s Nuke Program
• Propaganda Driven Hysteria Over Iranian Nuke Program
• Is Obama Fulfilling the Neocon Dream of Mass Regime Change in Muslim World?
• Obama: No options off table on Iran
• Fake Withdrawal? ‘US won’t leave Iraq oil to Iran’
• Crackpot Anti-Islam Activists, “Serial Fabricators” and the Tale of Iran and 9/11

Reader RichardH suggested the article, Bill Moyers: Fighting Back Against Corporate Personhood, to me.  I’ll give you just a little teaser to encourage you to read the whole thing.

Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down by the corporate and political right. Instead of creating a fair and level playing field for all, government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. Public institutions, laws, and regulations, as well as the ideas, norms, and beliefs that aimed to protect the common good and helped create America’s iconic middle class, would become increasingly vulnerable. The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow succinctly summed up results: “The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” In the wake of Citizens United, popular resistance is all that can prevent the richest economic interests in the country from buying the democratic process lock, stock, and barrel.

Each time I read another version of history, this time supplied by Bill Moyers, I learn some more nuance of our political past.

Moyer explains the antipathy of Jefferson, Madison, and Andrew Johnson to the bankers and industrialists of their time.  From High School history, I learned that these founding ancestors were perfect people that we must revere.  From the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, I learned that certainly Jefferson and Madison had some base, self-interested motives for their antipathy to northern industrialists.  From Moyers, I learn that though Jefferson and Madison may have been paranoid conspiracy theorists (from the Lies book), there were some sensible principles behind their objections to some of the rules put in place at the formation of the central banking system. Nuance, nuance, nuance.

I am glad to see some of our country’s thought leaders coming to realize that street protest is going to be an essential part of getting our government back.  Read the rest of the above article.

I found this version of the Associated Press article, Obama ‘putting colleges on notice’ on high tuition, to demonstrate to you what I heard on the CBS Evening News.

The article starts off with a summary of what the President said.

President Barack Obama fired a warning at the nation’s colleges and universities on Friday, threatening to strip their federal aid if they “jack up tuition” every year and to give the money instead to schools showing restraint and value.

In the article I found a rebuttal that I did not hear on the CBS Evening news.  This agrees with my immediate thoughts when I heard the President’s words.

University of Washington President Mike Young said Obama showed he did not understand how the budgets of public universities work. Young said the total cost to educate college students in Washington state, which is paid for by both tuition and state government dollars, has actually gone down because of efficiencies on campus. While universities are tightening costs, the state is cutting their subsidies and authorizing tuition increases to make up for the loss.

“They really should know better,” Young said. “This really is political theater of the worst sort.”

The last thing we need is for President Obama to be out selling the Republican propaganda that it is elitist college administrators jacking up the price of a college education.  In fact, Obama should be selling the idea that the efforts to reduce the deficit in the middle of a recession is cutting the funding for colleges and universities.  It is this behavior promoted by Republicans that is putting the onus on the students to pay the rising tuition costs.

Where other countries in the world, including some of the developing countries that are eating our lunch in the competition for manufacturing jobs, are paying most if not all the costs for higher education, the United States is cutting government support for higher education.

It is unconscionable for the President to be selling the regressive idea that the government’s cutting support for higher education is a wise policy to save the government some money.  This is an idiotic policy to turn The United States into a third world country.

I agree with Senator Sanders. I, too, get nervous when President Obama talks about working with the Republicans to reform Medicare. I’d much prefer him to work with progressive Democrats to reform Medicare. For instance, Medicare should be allowed to negotiate drug prices with its suppliers. Medicare might want to consider stopping the 15% premium above its own costs that it pays to private insurers to get them to do Medicare’s job in the program called Medicare Advantage. (I am subscribed to the program, and I appreciate the meager extra benefits I get for that 15%. However, in all honesty, it is probably a waste of money for the government to give such a subsidy to the private insurance companies. It does provide proof that the government run system is more cost-effective than what the private insurance industry is willing to do.)

The Talking Points Memo article, Elizabeth Warren On Daily Show: Washington Must Fight For The Middle Class, pointed me to the videos below:

Elizabeth Warren Extended Interview Pt. 1

Elizabeth Warren describes the role that she thinks the government should play in regulating America’s private sector, in this unedited, extended interview.

Elizabeth Warren Extended Interview Pt. 2

If the embedded videos above do not play for you, the following links work around the bugs in MTV’s serving of these videos. Part 1 and Part 2.

I would give my eyeteeth if this were the Elizabeth Warren that is running for Senator in Massachusetts. The one we do have running seems to have watered down her message so as not to offend any voters. As Jon so aptly put it, her professional handlers have sucked all the life out of her.

The point that Jon made, that went over Elizabeth’s head, is that the Democrats have to do a much better job educating the public on why we must do what the Democrats are proposing. She did not answer his question about why we don’t better explaining the benefits of the programs we have managed to get done. She did not answer the question about what is wrong with Ron Paul’s idea that taking all the power away from the government would prevent the capture of regulatory agencies by those they are supposed to regulate.

I agree that big government can be a problem for all the reasons that Ron Paul enumerates. However, if we are going to have big business, and unregulated markets mean we are going to have big business, then big government is our only hope of keeping the free market honest. If we have to have big government, which I just said we have to have, then we need to figure out how to make it work. Electing politicians who say, “Big government does not work, and if you elect us, we will prove it.” is not the way to solve the problem.

Would private industry hire managers who said, “Big business does not work, and if you hire us, we will prove it?”

Private industry hires and the voters should elect people that say, “Managing a large operation with a big budget is difficult, but if you choose me, I will show you that it can be done. If I fail to do the job, then get rid of me.”

The other thing that a President has to say is, “If you hire me, but put in place a Congress that will thwart every move I try to make, then I will surely fail.”

My fight with Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is over her need to educate the voters on why we must do things that she proposes. I tell them to use videos like this on her web site and facebook page. They argue that to do this might offend some voters. They ignore my statement that if she is be an effective Senator when she gets elected, then a very large majority of the people who voted her in must be strong and vocal backers of these proposals that she is making. In her campaign she needs to start the process of inoculating the voters against the huge lobbying effort that the big corporations will wage against all of her proposals. After the election is no time to disclose to the voters what it is she really wants to do.

If her opposition thinks that they can ridicule her ideas, then they are going to do it in the campaign itself. If she can see it coming, she needs to take steps to prevent it. Reacting to it after it happens will not be as effective.

This is exactly the message I gave to John Kerry with regard to the swift boat attacks during his presidential run. Not listening to my message got him roundly defeated.

On a daily basis, I am able to view the statistics on readership of this blog.  Now here is a way for you to see a 2011 year end summary.

I don’t know if it will make you happy or sad to find out that there are many others who spend time reading my blog posts.  Perhaps you can be happy in that misery likes company.