Follow this link to the article by Ellen Brown posted on OpEdNews.

I have been wondering when she would weigh in on this issue.

She is the author of the article I linked to in my post Computerized Front Running: Another Goldman-Dominated Fraud.

For the last several days, I have been suggesting this market dive could be coming from Goldman Sachs based on what she wrote in her previous article.  I didn’t realize quite how easy it would be for them to do this until I read her latest article.

Imagine you were holding that Accenture stock at around $42.00 and put in a market order to sell.  I bet you would have been surprised to find that your broker sold your stock for $0.01.  I am in the habit of using market orders, but I may rethink this in the future.

Oops!.  I looked up Ellen Brown’s web site for her book The Web of Debt. You can hear the introduction to her book at this link.  If I hadn’t seen a picture of Ellen Brown, I might have mistaken her for Ron Paul in drag.

She may have cause and effect a little confused.  Some of what her intro claims seems to be close to a line of at least stretching the truth if not all out bending it beyond recognition.

I leave it to the more expert readers of this web site to tell me what they think.

Follow this link to the story at Yahoo News.

Their is a slight danger in posting this information on this blog.  However, I think that Yahoo! is a much more widely read source than this blog is.  So the damage is already done.

With  signature authenticating mechanisms already in wide use, I’d think the technology is available to solve this problem.  I’d think that each link in the chain could have a pretty good idea of the immediate next links in the chain so that it wouldn’t have to check those links’ authenticity on every message.

The problem of the authenticity check being a single point of failure could be easily solved by making it a distributed mechanism.

If I can think of these things, I am sure the experts trying to implement a solution have already thought of these ideas.

Now it is a matter of getting the humans involved in the process to come to some sort of agreement.

Follow this link to comments about this graph

Follow this link to hear James Harris interview Danny Schechter.

Some phrases I jotted down from the interview:

Jailout not just a bailout

MEGO – My eyes glaze over (does this pertain to Steve’s Politics Blog?)

PlunderTheCrimeOfOurTime.com

Massachusetts sued Goldman Sachs for intentionally designing mortgages to fail. Goldman Sachs settled.  They weren’t the only ones doing it.

Needs pressure from the public.

You have to read the reviews of Plunder: Crime Of Our Time posted on its web site.

Or how about this quote from the web site:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it.”
– Political economist Frederic Bastiat, The Law [1850]

Perhaps this is the reason our good jobs are being outsourced. The business of America has become financial crime. We can’t be wasting our time on doing productive stuff. It just doesn’t pay as well. Who said crime doesn’t pay?

Follow this link to a broadcast I just watched on booktv.

New Yorker editor David Remnick talks about the life and political career of President Obama with NPR’s Michele Norris.

The discussion is about the book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama
I watched a significant portion of the show, but did not catch it from the beginning.  The book sounds like one I want to read as soon as I can.  The author seems to be very thoughtful. I am now going back to view the part of the show that I missed.

I found a review of the book and interview David Remnick’s Obama Biography: A Bit Much, a Bit Too Soon. Maybe I skimmed this review too fast.  I couldn’t find anything in the review that matched the negativity of the  headline.

Follow this link to a story posted on OpEd News.

OK, I can understand why the mainstream press hasn’t got a clue.  Particularly the business press is supported by the very people they are reporting on. (RichardH posted a link to an article that explains how Warren Buffet gets away with what he does and still comes out smelling like roses in the press.  It is no coincidence that Buffet is now vouching for the honesty of Goldman Sachs.  Well if not honesty, at least not getting caught up until now.)

What really surprises me is that a poster on OpEdNews is mystified.

A few days ago I posted Computerized Front Running: Another Goldman-Dominated Fraud. This post linked to the Ellen Brown piece that was on the OpeEdNews web site.

Doesn’t anybody remember stories that were posted more than a day ago?

It is like the whole world just does not want to believe the information that is being thrust in front of them.

Follow this link to the article on Motley Fool.

I link to this article particularly for the remarks that Warren Buffet made in defense of Goldman Sachs.  When I heard him make these remarks while I was watching Nightly Business Report, I was shocked.  I still don’t know what to make of it.

I know that Warren Buffet is lionized in investing circles.  However, his life story doesn’t necessarily assure you that he only operates on the highest ethical plain.

He does seem to be saying that if not prevented by regulation, he is perfectly happy to engage in some sharp business practices.

In the late 1960s, I was in a cafeteria in Texas that specialized in Mexican food. A lady behind me in line asked me for my recommendations for food.

When I told her that I didn’t have any better ideas about the food than she did, she became irate. She said that she was proud of her heritage and I should be proud of mine. What do you suppose she was thinking?

Good thing she didn’t have a badge

Follow this link to the AP story run in the Worcester T & G on April 10, 2010.

This story was the subject of a misinformed letter to the editor published on May 4, 2010.

My response to the letter was:

You can depend on the AP’s unbalanced summary of Daniel Mudd’s testimony, you could depend on my unbalanced selection of quotes, or you could read his prepared remarks in their entirety at http://fcic.gov/hearings/pdfs/2010-0409-Mudd.pdf.

Here is my selection of quotes.

Maintaining the delicate balance between profitability as a private company and service to the public mission became impossible.

The GSE’s role in the housing market is not to originate mortgages – their role is to acquire mortgages originated by others in order to provide liquidity, increase stability, and to assist in providing affordable housing to the American people.

That balance included a fiduciary responsibility to our investors – the shareholders to whom the government sold Fannie Mae in 1972 …

… Fannie Mae’s market share fell from its historical level of approximately 40% to nearly 20%, as the private sector including banks, Wall Street and mortgage specialists entered the market.

How could an entity whose market share was cut in half be the cause of the problem?

Fannie Mae did not accept every type of mortgage that was originated by the market. Wall Street and other private subprime and Alt-A mortgages have default rates that have significantly exceeded those of Fannie Mae-guaranteed subprime and Alt-A loans.

Perhaps we should have gone to the government and gotten a clear answer to the question: Do you want more capital or more lending?

The GSE’s were asked to take a lead in providing modifications. They were asked to provide warehouse loans by lenders who had previously screamed ‘foul’ at the idea of Fannie or Freddie entering the market.

The story is more complex than I have been saying (or the AP has been saying), so it does pay to read the entire testimony.

Follow this link to the article in OpEdNews.

Can any of my readers verify the description of European capitalism as found in this article?

The article highlights the role that workers play in the management of European companies.  It also highlights the standing of European companies in the global economy.

Much of what is presented here is a surprise to me.

Is it a surprise to you?

If we tried to adopt some of the policies that has made Europe a success, the Tea Cuppers would throw one mean hissy fit.  That probably means we are doomed to suffer with our current system because we wouldn’t want to upset the 18% who have the guns.