Global Occupy Movement #30 Met concrete casussen en constructies

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Op dinsdag 11 december 2012 12:32 schreef Summers het volgende:
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Op dinsdag 11 december 2012 12:45 schreef mossad_agent het volgende:

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Wie is 'we'??

Ik vind wel dat diegene die de plaatjes maakt iets beter zijn huiswerk mag maken en niet zomaar namens iedereen mag spreken. Ik ben het er namelijk niet mee eens.

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Op dinsdag 11 december 2012 22:32 schreef Lavenderr het volgende:

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Wat is Holland toch mooi he?

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Op woensdag 12 december 2012 09:33 schreef mossad_agent het volgende:

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Daar werken we met zijn allen voor..

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en niet zomaar namens iedereen mag spreken.

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Op woensdag 12 december 2012 10:48 schreef HyperViper het volgende:

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Alleen suffe burgerlijke loser werken daarvoor.

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Op woensdag 12 december 2012 11:05 schreef mossad_agent het volgende:

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Hoef je mij niet te vertellen hoor, maar dan niet huillie huillie doen als je als werkschuw tuig wordt bestempeld.

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Op woensdag 12 december 2012 11:08 schreef HyperViper het volgende:

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Volgens mij moet jij begrijpend leren lezen. -reactie op -

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Op woensdag 12 december 2012 11:09 schreef mossad_agent het volgende:

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een jij-bak.. sterke come back

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Google ontwijkt 2 miljard dollar aan belastingen binnen een jaar - via Nederland

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'Don't be evil', luidt het motto van Google. Maar dat geldt kennelijk niet als het om de gehate blauwe enveloppen gaat. De Amerikaanse internetgigant blijkt het afgelopen jaar namelijk 2 miljard dollar aan vennootschapsbelasting te ontwijken via een brievenbusfirma op Bermuda. En dat is een nieuw record. Nederland is een belangrijke tussenstop in Googles belastingroute.

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Strijd wie de corrupste is populair bij Portugezen

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Het bordspel, dat voor 19 euro te koop is bij diverse Portugese winkelketens, doet sterk denken aan het klassieke Monopoly. Spelers moeten zoveel mogelijk punten verdienen in de categorieën 'macht', 'stemmen' en 'geld'. Uiteindelijk wint degene die het meest 'corrupt' blijkt als de Troika ten tonele verschijnt. En hoewel de makers van Vem ai a Troika bezweren dat elke gelijkenis met de werkelijkheid berust op toeval - zo wordt Portugal in het spel Portugalândia genoemd- zijn de parallellen met echte politici en bankiers opvallend.

Zozeer dat vanuit Spanje, Griekenland en Italië, de andere Zuid-Europese landen die worstelen met economische problemen en hun financiële geloofwaardigheid, belangstelling is om ook een versie van het bordspel op de markt te brengen. Maar dan met eigen politici en bankiers in de hoofdrol.

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NYPD for hire: how uniformed New York cops moonlight for banks

No one begrudges an officer doing security work in his own time, but the Paid Detail Unit creates worrying conflicts of interest

I was surprised two weeks ago to walk into my local TD Bank, on Greenwich Avenue in the West Village, New York to find that the security officer who was usually standing by, on alert, had been replaced by a uniformed, armed, radio-carrying New York Police Department officer, Officer Battle. I confirmed from him that he was, in fact, an NYPD officer – and was working part-time for TD bank.

Of course, this raised red flags for me. After the violent crackdown on Occupy Wall Street in November of 2011, when that group was having some of its most significant successes in protests and actions that challenged private banks and Wall Street institutions, many wondered what had motivated the unexpected aggression against protesters by local police officers tasked, at least overtly by municipal law, with upholding their first amendment rights.

The NYPD became, at the time, coordinated in its crackdown once Occupy had started to target banks. Was there a relationship behind the scenes of which we were unaware?

Chase bank had made a gift of $4.6m to the Police Foundation – boasting on its website that this "was the largest" in that group's history, and hoping that the money would allow the NYPD to "strengthen security". This police fund, as well as some details of a Rudi Giuliani-initiated program by which police officers had been hired by corporations, created a brief stir online.

But were Chase, TD, Bank of America and others, which had been targeted by activists, actually now employing our police forces directly?

The answer is yes. A nontransparent program called "Paid Detail Unit" has been set up so that private corporations are actually employing NYPD officers, who are in uniform and armed. The difference is that when these "public servants" are on the payroll of the banks, they are no longer serving you and the impartial rule of law in your city – despite what their uniform and badge imply. Neither New York Councilwoman Christine Quinn's press office nor an NYPD's spokesman responded to my queries regarding this program.

I went to a second TD Bank, on Third Avenue in Manhattan. There was NYPD Officer Kearse, also armed and in uniform. I asked him who paid him to watch the bank: he confirmed that the Paid Detail Unit did so. The bank pays fees directly to the NYPD, and the NYPD then pays him, after taking a cut. Kearse works at the bank 6.5 hours per shift, twice a month. That's not much, he said, compared to many NYPD officers "who do lots more".

"What would you do if there were protesters in this bank branch?" I asked.

"I'd remove them," he said.

"What if there were a conflict of interest between what the bank wanted him to do and what the rule of law was for citizens?" I asked.

He did not reply.

I asked a manager at the branch what the role of the NYPD officer was in the bank. She said, "All I know is he is there to watch us." She called a more senior manager to answer the rest of my questions, Patrick O'Toole:

"They are New York City police officers off-duty, paid by the Paid Detail Unit," he said. This is a program "that various corporations are able to use to obtain off-duty police officers for whatever purpose they need them. The bank supplies every branch in New York City with an off-duty police officer."

In the event of a protest, I asked, whom would the officer be working for? The bank, or the city and the citizens of New York? "I wouldn't know," he said, and referred me to TD Bank corporate security. "He's working under us when he's here: we pay Paid Detail and the NYPD writes the checks."

Crooksandliars.com shone rare light on the size of this program. According to that report, the city gets a 10% administrative fee, which, in 2011, amounted to $1.18m – meaning that PDU wages netted NYPD officers a total of $11.8m, an amount which had doubled since 2002.

But who indemnifies these cops working for banks from lawsuits that might arise from possible illegal actions against citizens while working this kind of job? Not the banks, it turns out, but you the taxpayer. In other words, you pay the bill to protect that officer from lawsuits incurred if he breaks the law in protecting the bank.

This is a trend confirmed to be taking place in cities across the country. San Francisco has the San Francisco patrol special police, a private police unit that is indistinguishable from municipal units. Citizen reporters in my social media community confirmed that nonprofit organizations in Houston hire Houston police; a Portland citizen reporter confirmed that he saw Portland cops hired by local banks in that city, as well; and Autumn Smith, a Michigan citizen journalist, has written about seeing Michigan police in uniform to protect Best Buy and other corporations, so they can save on hiring private security with officers on the taxpayer's payroll.

At the same time, privatisation is also moving apace, as Wall Street Journal reports that several municipalities, including Oakland, California and Chicago, have bypassed local police and are hiring private security forces to take over many of the police departments' traditional functions.

Of course, many would think that the chance to let hardworking, underpaid cops make more money by moonlighting for private business is no big deal – or, since the NYPD gets a cut of these officers' hours of serving private industry, a win-win for the municipal budget in Manhattan. Indeed, moonlighting, out of uniform as a private citizen, is fair enough. But in uniform, armed, with the backup of the whole NYPD? That is another story.

The conflicts of interest potential in this arrangement soon become clear. Whom is that cop serving if there is a dispute between a New York City (or Houston or Portland) citizen and the bank or corporation that hires cops, and on which those cops' own mortgages and kids' college fees are now dependent? I had the bizarre experience of witnessing an NYPD investigation at Chase stop cold, as an NYPD detective told me that "Chase's investigators said there was no problem."

What if is it is the bank that is committing a crime against the citizen: will NYPD investigate impartially? What if the bank instructs the NYPD officer to commit a crime – make a wrongful arrest, say – against a New York citizen during a lawful protest? Will the officer decline to do so, bucking his bosses? Indeed, does the off-duty cop in the bank have police powers or just private security powers? What powers of arrest does he or she have?

And if bankers or the senior heads of corporations that hire the cops themselves commit crimes in other areas, will those crimes be fully investigated. Or will those executives, now police employers as well, have what Russians call "protektsia"?

Those are all questions that NYPD spokespeople should be willing to answer, but won't.

And then, there are the fiduciary questions. Your tax dollars trained that officer; dressed him in uniform; equipped him with weapons and technology. Should all of that expensive public benefit be farmed out to private corporations, along with the intimidating prestige of the brand of a real NYPD or Houston or Portland police officer?

Finally, the wrench that this program throws into impartial adjudication of the rule of law is obvious. The NYPD won't answer questions about how much revenue it generates from PDU. But given that it is a significant portion of the paychecks of your local cops on the beat, then how can brave advocates for banks' paying the price for crime, such as New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann, work effectively to hold banks accountable while the city law enforcement officers under the DA are employees of those same banks? The branches of municipal government are now at cross-purposes when it comes to who has access to law enforcement and who is indemnified from prosecution or investigation.

An independent, uncorrupted municipal police force should be our thin blue line: defenders against crime, protectors of public safety, guarantors of citizens' rights. If these officers of the law become or have already become a private militia for hire, to whom can we turn on the frontline of justice?

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Op dinsdag 18 december 2012 13:17 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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We know exactly what we don’t want. Let us speak to each other what we want; what we desire as individuals, what we desire as a community. We need to open all the possibilities, all channels, all flows to talk about pain, oppression, violence, as well as hopes and visions. We need to listen to each other and to know that we are able to take the steps and enter the path of building such a democratic society, where even the weakest voice is heard, and one’s pain everyone’s pain.

Violence, injustice, intimidation and arrogance can no longer find refuge in our country. Theft and economic looting must be punished, and undue oppression of the people put to an end. We have to put the concepts of equality, reciprocity, fairness and dignity into action. Only through action and activity we can find our way to where we want to go and how to get there. Strategy and vision development can not be generated or delegated by the few; we must all make an effort to determine our collective future.

We have risen! We have conquered fear. In exactly two weeks, Slovenia has had a total of 54 uprisings in 28 cities: Maribor, Ljubljana, Ptuj, Gornja Radgona, Jesenice, Kranj, Bled, Koper, Nova Gorica, Novo mesto, Velenje, Ajdov¨čina, Trbovlje, Celje, Dravograd, Ravne na Koro¨kem, Kr¨ko, Bre¸ice, Izola, Murska Sobota, Bohinjska Bistrica, Lendava, Trebnje, Slovenske Konjice, Litija, Kočevje, Radenci. Over 77,500 people took the streets, according to reports from all over Slovenia, though of course media, police and politicians counted our numbers several thousand less. They trivialize our fight and they will continue to do that. They can’t hide our numbers, because the streets belong to those who care about the country and want to change what has been forced upon us over the last 20 years. In order not to lose the future, we have to take back the freedom and power of our votes!

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We know exactly what we don’t want. Let us speak to each other what we want; what we desire as individuals, what we desire as a community. We need to open all the possibilities, all channels, all flows to talk about pain, oppression, violence, as well as hopes and visions. We need to listen to each other and to know that we are able to take the steps and enter the path of building such a democratic society, where even the weakest voice is heard, and one’s pain everyone’s pain.

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Op zaterdag 22 december 2012 17:23 schreef mossad_agent het volgende:

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Het moet anders! Alleen dan in een ander jasje.....

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Banking industry's year of shame ends in a blizzard of Libor revelations

UBS's £940m fine disproves the theory that a few bad apples have caused the rot. It now seems the problem is cultural

The pledge made by one UBS trader – "I'm a man of my word" – seems a fine sentiment, until the realisation dawns that the promise he is making is to do "one humongous deal" with a broker to help him manipulate the Libor rate.

Last week saw another blizzard of revelations in the Libor scandal, as the Swiss bank was slapped with hefty fines for repeatedly trying to fiddle the key interest rate.

"I will fucking do one humongous deal with you … Like a 50,000-buck deal, whatever … I need you to keep it as low as possible … If you do that … I'll pay you, you know, $50,000, $100,000 … whatever you want."

The revelations contained in the documents published alongside last week's settlement with regulators in the UK, US and Switzerland, as they fined UBS £940m, came at the end of a year of shame for banking.

Andrew Simms of thinktank the New Economics Foundation now says that, far from the banking crisis being caused by a few bad apples, "the level of mould inside the barrel is thick and healthy and covering every part of it". The coalition is in the process of rethinking the UK regulatory regime – giving the Bank of England back the power to police the banks, for example – but Simms says the changes are little more than cosmetic: "I think the banks feel almost untouchable – the absence of any genuine structural reforms; the absence of any genuine change of culture. I think they think they've got away with it."

Taxpayers who had hoped the multibillion-pound rescues of Northern Rock, RBS and Lloyds Banking Group marked the darkest days of the financial crisis have instead watched with horror as increased scrutiny from the world's regulators has uncovered a consistent pattern of misbehaviour and, in some cases, outright fraud.

An industry once viewed by ministers – not least in the Labour government – as a world-beating national champion has become not only a drain on the public purse, but a source of shame.

"We have just had one scandal after another," says Vince Cable, the business secretary, whose strong reputation in opposition was founded partly on his fierce criticisms of Britain's banks. "There is a deep cultural problem."

And he argues that the failings are not confined to the swashbuckling disregard for the public interest revealed in the Barclays and UBS cases. It also extended to the retail banks' dealings with ordinary savers and borrowers: "The high street banks lost their relationship with their customers."

The legacy of the era when anyone who ventured into a branch could expect to be bombarded with offers of loans and insurance has come back to bite the biggest banks. The bill to compensate customers wrongly sold payment protection insurance has already topped £12bn, for example, while small business customers mis-sold interest rate swaps are also awaiting multimillion-pound payouts.

The same claims companies that have spearheaded the effort to win PPI compensation for clients are now turning their efforts to investigating the interest-only mortgages that were popular while house prices were booming.

And one after another, the major banks have been fined for a string of other offences. Even those once regarded as having escaped the 2008 banking crisis with their reputations intact – HSBC and Standard Chartered – have now joined the shameful roll-call.

HSBC was fined £1.2bn by US authorities for having systems so lax that it let billions of pounds be laundered for drug barons in Mexico; cashiers in its Mexican branches had extra-wide windows to allow the piles of cash to be paid in.

Standard Chartered paid £415m in penalties after breaching US rules on money laundering, including with Iran. One of its top executives, Richard Meddings, is said to have responded to warnings about the bank's misdeeds with: "You fucking Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians?" The bank denies such remarks were made.

Barclays was fined £290m by the Financial Services Authority and US regulators after its traders were found to be offering bottles of Bollinger champagne in exchange for collusion in fixing Libor.

Then last week came the fine for UBS over charges that 40 staff were involved in or aware of efforts to rig Libor. The banks made corrupt payments of £15,000 a quarter to brokers to help fix the rates. Two former employees of the Swiss bank – including British citizen Tom Hayes – have been charged in the US.

There will be more Libor revelations in the new year, too: bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to be next. The Financial Services Authority still has investigations under way into six financial firms, not all of them banks.

This apparently widespread culture of "gaming" any rules put in place to constrain the banks' activities underpinned the findings of the parliamentary commission on banking standards, chaired by Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, which issued its first report on Friday.

George Osborne has backed the proposals of Sir John Vickers's commission on banking, which called for the banks' safer retail activities to be legally and financially separated from their riskier investment banking businesses. But Tyrie and his colleagues argued that this so-called ring fence between the two types of activity should be "electrified", to prevent canny banks from finding a way around it.

Tyrie said the latest revelations about the banks' behaviour "beggar belief," and offer "the clearest illustration yet that a great deal more needs to be done to restore standards".

Chris Leslie of the shadow Treasury team says Labour will fight to have a backstop written into the legislation in the new year that would impose a full split on the banks if they have failed to implement the Vickers proposals faithfully by 2015.

"It's about trying to create a banking system that is not only safe but appears to be safe, not just for customers but for taxpayers," he says. "The jury's out on a ring fence, therefore we have got to insure against its failure."

Tyrie's commission is due to report next year on a series of other issues, such as whether a new professional body might take on the role of banning miscreant bankers in the same way as the General Medical Council has the power to strike off doctors.

But Cable says new rules and regulations, and measures such as the coalition's creation of two new watchdogs, the Prudential Regulation Authority (inside the Bank) and the Financial Conduct Authority, can only go so far.

"You can only partly deal with these things through structural reform," he says. He points to the importance of competition – challengers such as Metro Bank, Handelsbanken and the mutually owned Co-op grabbing a growing share of new business – as another important check on the other banks' behaviour.

He also welcomes the wholesale shake-up in personnel at the top of the major financial groups since the grim days of 2008 and 2009: "We've got sensible people running Lloyds and Barclays, who are much more interested in long-term banking."

Despite the new faces, the persistence of bumper pay deals in the Square Mile has helped perpetuate fears that it is "business as usual" at the top of Britain's financial institutions. Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research shows that people working in the financial sector routinely earn up to 20% more than those with similar qualifications elsewhere.

When it was announced last week that Hector Sants, the former boss of the Financial Services Authority, had won a package worth up to £3m in his new job at Barclays – where he has been brought in to help restore the broken corporate culture – many in the City didn't bat an eyelid. But to outsiders it looked like an extraordinary reward for a gamekeeper turning poacher.

And while the reputational damage to the banks of the latest revelations has been serious, the financial penalties do not seem to be causing too much pain. Even as UBS admitted that the £940m payout would force it into a fourth-quarter loss, its share price barely moved, almost in relief that the bad news was out of the way.

Pete Hahn of the Cass Business School is concerned that fines have become a "cost of doing business" – one of those hiccups caused by having operations in financial centres around the world.

He asks whether instead banks that misbehave should be stripped of their licences – effectively closed down: "My suggestion is that the penalties need to be much more. That will create a real cultural change."

Meanwhile, Cable says he can easily understand why many members of the public still don't have confidence in the banks: "I don't have confidence either."

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Op zaterdag 22 december 2012 17:40 schreef Summers het volgende:

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Ja zelf verantwoordelijkheid nemen voor de wereld waar je in leeft ipv het ouderwetse aanbidden en volgen van "leiders" . Dat is zo vorig tijdperk .

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Op zondag 23 december 2012 11:34 schreef Gray het volgende:
Aanbidding van idolen zie je ook in onze maatschappij veel. Van politieke kopstukken tot matige zangers uit een auditie-programma van tv.

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Op zondag 23 december 2012 13:11 schreef Gray het volgende:

Over afdwalen gesproken: waar zou jij het over willen hebben?