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  Malcolm August 14, 2014 at 3:29am

  NANCY: the #3 Democrat in Congress tells a town hall that his Democrat president that he supports may be impeached if the GOP re-takes the House. This is not "something major???"
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  Esoteric Emissary August 13, 2014 at 2:56pm

  When are there NOT conflicts between the USA leadership and it's people? You are reaching into a big bag that has everything, then when you find what you're looking for, you act surprised. Waste of time looking at this.
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    Malcolm > Esoteric Emissary August 13, 2014 at 5:06pm

    Good point, as I should have named the Full Moon transit as "something major regarding U.S. leadership and its people,." And I think discussions with impeachment qualifies as something major.

    Astrology offers clues about future events and hence opportunities for planning. It can not and will never give "black and white" answers that so many people demand. 
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  Malcolm August 12, 2014 at 8:37pm

  Citigroup AND Travelers Insurance played a role with removing Glass Steagall, but it was Robert Rubin from the Clinton Administration (THE SAME PERSON WHO BORROWED MONEY FROM THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND TO CREATE THE PHONEY CLINTON "budget surplus") who really implemented Glass Steagall, as financial author Robert Weissman reported:

  As our colleagues at Common Dreams point out, today is the 10-year anniversary of Glass-Steagall’s repeal. Robert Weissman writes: “It is an anniversary worth noting for what it teaches us about forestalling financial crises, the consequences of maniacal deregulation, and the out-of-control political power of the megafinancial institutions.”

  Weissman notes that Glass-Steagall remained law until 1998, when Citicorp and Travelers Group announced they were merging:

  Such a combination of banking and insurance companies was illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act, but was excused due to a loophole that provided a two-year review period of proposed mergers. The merger was premised on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Citigroup’s co-chairs Sandy Weill and John Reed led a swarm of industry executives and lobbyists who trammeled the halls of Congress to make sure a deal was cut. But as the deal-making on the bill moved into its final phase in Fall 1999, fears ran high that the entire exercise would collapse. (Reed now says repeal of Glass-Steagall was a mistake.)

  Robert Rubin stepped into the breach. Having recently stepped aside as Treasury Secretary, Rubin was at the time negotiating the terms of his next job as an executive without portfolio at Citigroup. But this was not public knowledge at the time. Deploying the credibility built up as part of what the media had labeled “The Committee to Save the World” (Rubin, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, so named for their interventions in addressing the Asian financial crisis in 1997), Rubin helped broker the final deal.

  The Financial Services Modernization Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, formally repealed Glass-Steagall. Among a long list of deregulatory moves large and small over the last two decades, Gramm-Leach-Bliley was the signal piece of financial deregulation.

  The result? Casino fever took over commercial banking industry
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  Malcolm August 12, 2014 at 5:56pm

  Nancy, thanks for the gardening advice.  Unfortunately Obama is still a blind supporter (with the other supporters in both political parties) of the Rothschild bankers, as well as with Israel.  This economy is heading for a serious financial debacle, especially when you look at two very important facts regarding the very dangerous bank bailouts (TARP and HARP) that both George W. Bush AND Barack Obama have created:

  
  #1: What was the cost of TARP?

    For starters, the bailout is/was both larger and smaller than the $700 Billion you remember.
     The version that passed Congress on October 3, 2008, was not the version that got implemented. It was changed almost immmediately.

    since Congress only authorized $350 billion to be lent out in 2008. The other $350 billion was saved for the new President when he took office in 2009. Obama never used the TARP funds to further bail out banks. Instead, he launched the $787 billion Economic Stimulus package. Second, the government bought bank stocks when the prices were depressed and sold later, when prices were higher. By 2012, banks had repaid $292 billion of TARP funds, leaving only $120 billion still outstanding. These funds were used for the HARP program, to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

   The amount of outstanding TARP is even narrower now and headed for an overall profit. Or is it?
     Like most things on Wall Street, there are hidden costs and losses not recognized until well into the future.

   The reality is that bailed-out firms essentially wrote off their losses on taxes. As of Dec. 30, TARP was still owed $67.3 billion, including $27 billion in realized losses — which is to say, that money is gone and is never coming back.
     Now, TARP is losing money as it tries to exit the programs.

      A new report by SNL Financial shows the Treasury Department is taking a beating in auctions of the Capital Purchase Program, one of the pipelines through which bailout money flowed.
      The auctions essentially sell off TARP debt and equity to private investors. Unfortunately, investors aren’t really interested in zombie-bank debt. It’s been selling at an 8% to 20% discount. The last auction, on Jan. 25, met with a 35% discount. In all, the latest CPP auction cost taxpayers $104.5 million.

   Because of accounting rules, those losses on TARP securities doesn't have to be recognized until it hits the market. Thus it might be several years before we know the final story of how much we lost on TARP.

     About 330 banks have exited the TARP bailout, but around 400 smaller banks still remain. The ones that remain are obviously the weaker ones. Of those, 162 are behind on their repayments.

    As for the TARP money moved to HARP, none of it will be repayed because it is a subsidy. The CBO estimated that $16 Billion of it will be spent.

  

    One last note about TARP, more than half of the 74 Senators who voted for TARP will no longer be in office by 2015. Only 7 of the 25 Senators who voted against TARP will have left office.

  #2: How big was the bailout?

    Many are still under the impression that TARP = The Bailout.
  In fact, TARP was only a small part of the Wall Street bailout. Most of the bailout was accomplished through the Federal Reserve.

   The net total? As of November 10, 2011, it was $29,616.4 billion dollars — (or 29 and a half trillion, if you prefer that nomenclature). Three facilities—CBLS, PDCF, and TAF— are responsible for the lion’s share — 71.1% of all Federal Reserve assistance ($22,826.8 billion).

   $29 Trillion is around twice the size of America's GDP.
    The Federal Reserve claims they only lent $1.7 Trillion to the big banks. Why the huge difference in totals? Because the Fed only counts the most outstanding at any one time.

    Here's a quick list of the Fed borrowers:

  Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
  Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
  Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
  Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
  Barclays PLC - $868 billion
  Bear Sterns - $853 billion
  Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
  Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
  JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
  Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
  UBS - $287 billion
  Credit Suisse - $262 billion
  Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
  Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
  BNP Paribas - $175 billion
  Wells Fargo - $159 billion
  Dexia - $159 billion
  Wachovia - $142 billion
  Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
  Societe Generale - $124 billion
  "All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion

   Behind the enormous sum, we find certain items of interest. Such as:

    The Fed paid $659.4 million in "fees" to these very same institutions during the period in question. This is not part of the bailout.

    You might have noticed that about $3 Trillion went overseas.

     The banks made $13 Billion from Fed below-market rates. This is not part of the bailout.

    The bailout of Fannie and Freddie (which directly assists the banking industry) is still negative $187 billion. They have returned none of the money yet. However, Fannie and Freddie have paid $50.4B in dividends to the Treasury.

     OK. So now we have the full picture, right? TARP bailout was a small loser on something around $600 Billion, while the Fed bailout was around $29 Trillion and pretty much a wash, right?
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  1 darkstar August 12, 2014 at 12:34am

  Let's hope this terrible war between Israel and Palestine ends.  I have a FEELING (just a FEELING) that when Israel stops fighting, war on earth will end.  (Let's hope).
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    Malcolm > 1 darkstar August 12, 2014 at 1:00am

    darkstar1: I think it is more about installing honesty and morals, as well as changing the mindset of our U.S. (s)elected District of Criminals yes/no button-pushers.  It is unfortunate that MANY of these individuals (including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, who voted for funding of Israel's "iron sieve (i.e. dome)") support Israel or are on Israel's payroll and don't mind frequenting Israel's whorehouses (and also don't mind getting videotaped, because they are doing the same privacy invasion with others via help from the NSA).

    It is good that you know how to grow food, because the U.S.A. is heading for a major financial crash sometime in the next few years.  And it may even be possibly sooner, due to current U.S. citizen unrest (as evident by the growing call for impeachment of Obama)  AND third party bankers getting fed up with Rothschild affiliated bankers using countries like Israel and the U.S. for coersion purposes.   The current mindset of Israel and the U.S. is to either accept the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency or learn to live in underground bunkers with the reptiles (since the Rothschild bankers obviously won't mind such living conditions). 
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      1 darkstar > Malcolm August 12, 2014 at 1:21am

      Malcolm:  I don't know how to grow food.  I live in an apartment building. 

      Just have a feeling that nothing bad is going to happen here (financially). I think that there might be some minor ups and downs but nothing TRAMATIC. (Maybe I'm dreaming, but I don't think so.) 
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        Malcolm > 1 darkstar August 12, 2014 at 1:29am

        Sorry, but I inferred that you did grow you own food due to your posted endorsement of people growing their own food and becoming vegetarians in previous postings here on Ashtar.

        My mistake.

        By the way, I live in an apartment also, and I do grow some veggies and fruits in a small area outside (notably tomatoes, jalapena peppers, yellow bell peppers, red bell peppers, black berries, and cantalope).  I have problems with people picking my stuff, but some has made it to my salad bowl and one cantalope made it to work, where I got a thumbs up. I recommend trying to grow food if you (are anyone else) is able to do this; I believe your chart suggests that you might be good at it.  
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          Lisa Barnthouse-Fraser > Malcolm August 12, 2014 at 2:40am

          i grow a garden and this year my cucumbers were insane i use no pesticides at all and they were like a foot long and 2 inches round lol