Tag Archives: False Sense Of Security

European banks sitting on €1tn mountain of bad debt, survey finds

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“European banks are sitting on bad debts of €1tn – the equivalent to the GDP of Spain – which is holding back their profitability and ability to lend to high street customers and businesses.  The €1tn (£706bn) of so-called non-performing loans amount to almost 6% of the total loans and advances of Europe’s banks and 10% when lending to other financial institutions are excluded. The equivalent figure for the US banking industry is around 3%. As well as bad debts, the EBA pointed to the cost inefficiencies and the cost of so-called conduct issues, such as fines, compensation and legal costs, which absorb almost 4% of banks’ operating income.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/24/european-banks-one-trillion-euros-bad-debt

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Family Gets $4.9M After Calif. Cops Beat Homeless Son to Death on Video

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“Because the assailants who beat Kelly Thomas to death on the streets of Fullerton, California were swaddled in government-issued costumes and clothed in ‘qualified immunity,’ the killers went free, and the city’s taxpayers will have to underwrite a $4.9 million civil settlement with the victim’s family, reports the Orange County Register. Video recordings of the assault captured the anguished screams of the helpless, unarmed, 160-pound man as he was slugged, kicked, tasered, and clubbed as the attackers bellowed, ‘Stop resisting!’ With his last words Kelly pleaded for his father Ron Thomas, a retired sheriff’s deputy.”

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/family-4-9m-cops-beat-mentally-ill-son-death-video-walked-free/

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DOL Fiduciary Rule Is ‘Biggest Change’ To Investment Advice Industry

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“The final version of the Department of Labor’s rule to amend the definition of fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act is expected sometime next year.  Under ERISA, advisors would be prohibited from engaging in transactions that entail conflicts of interest for the client unless there is an exemption. Advisors and clients would be required to sign best interest contract exemption contracts, in which broker-dealers and advisors acknowledge the new fiduciary standards and their impartial conduct codes. The DOL’s fiduciary rule also requires information on exactly what and who gets paid via product sales to be published in detail on publicly available websites.”

http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2015/11/23/dol-fiduciary-rule-is-biggest-change-that-well-go?page_all=1

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Martin Armstrong: Kiss Your Pension Fund Goodbye

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“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week in the unanimous 8-page decision, Tibble v Edison, stating that employers have a duty to protect workers in their 401(k) plans from mutual funds that perform poorly or are too expensive.  Monday’s unanimous ruling sends a warning to employers that they now must improve their plans, as it is now an obligation to project employees. This comes just in time for the next step: government to seize private funds and prosecute employers who poorly chose a fund manager.  This ruling will have a dramatic impact upon investment management.  It sets the stage to justify government seizure of private pension funds to protect pensioners.”

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30875

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The Feds Won’t Stop Terrorism This Way

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“While the current rationale for encryption back doors is to fight terrorism, they wouldn’t be used just for that purpose. For proof, just look at the history of the PATRIOT Act. This law gives the US government unprecedented civil forfeiture authority over the US ‘correspondent accounts’ of any bank in the world. If an alleged terrorist or other criminal deposits money at the bank overseas, the PATRIOT Act allows the government to seize an equivalent sum of money in the correspondent account in the US.  Proponents justified the law as a necessary escalation in the ‘War on Terror.’ But the very first time the government used its new civil forfeiture authority, it had nothing to do with terrorism.”

http://www.nestmann.com/the-feds-wont-stop-terrorism-this-way

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The War On Terror Has Cost Taxpayers $1.7 Trillion

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“According to data compiled by the Mercatus Center citing the Congressional Research Service, the cost of global ‘War on Terror’ operations (including both Afghanistan and Iraq) since 2001 had reached about $1.6 trillion by FY2014. When war funding approved by Congress for FY2015 is taken into account, the total reaches $1.7 trillion. The majority of that funding, some $1.562 trillion, has been allocated to the Department of Defense. The ‘War on Terror’ is proving extremely expensive compared to past military campaigns. Putting the cost into context, the bill for the Vietnam War comes to about $686 billion when adjusted for inflation.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/03/the-war-on-terror-has-cost-taxpayers-1-7-trillion-infographic/

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Does fear make Americans stupid?

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“Terrorists strike, people feel fear, and the terrorists win. This is foolish. More Americans are killed by their cars or bathtubs, but you don’t fear those things. You shouldn’t fear terrorism either. Fear has been bad for America.  Every time the public feels afraid the politicians do something stupid. For example: We felt fear about 9-11 so we imposed the Patriot Act and the TSA on ourselves.  We felt fear about supposed weapons of mass destruction, and so we invaded Iraq. That invasion was the petri dish for ISIS.  Now we’re afraid of ISIS. So that means we must be on the verge of doing something else idiotic. Please refuse to participate in the stupidity. Instead, actively oppose it.”

https://downsizedc.org/blog/does-fear-make-americans-stupid

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Obama-led drone strikes kill innocents 90% of the time: report

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“Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a 5-month-long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.  The apparent 10 percent success rate with regards to a specific span in America’s drone war is among the most damning revelations to surface so far as the result of a series of articles published by The Intercept on Thursday this week which rely on classified and confidential intelligence documents supplied by an unknown source. ‘These docs illustrate what a video game, drained of all humanity, these drone assassinations have become,’ founding editor Glenn Greenwald tweeted.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/15/90-of-people-killed-by-us-drone-strikes-in-afghani/

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Stop-and-Seize Turns Police Into Self-Funding Gangs

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“With government unable to pay police as much as they need or would like, police are confiscating their revenue directly from the populace.  The threat to individual liberty from stop-and-seize is painfully clear.  Without requirements for an arrest or for a warrant, the power to confiscate cash is a clear diminution of property rights. Effectively, the police have been given official sanction to commit literal highway robbery without the threat of punishment. People whose property was seized must pay a lot of money and spend a long time in court for even the chance of getting it back, and police who seize money with no good reason don’t, apparently, suffer any threat of discipline.”

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-12/stop-and-seize-turns-police-into-self-funding-gangs

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Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014

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“Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.”

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/39102

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