War on Whistleblowers

E120, e130,

More Money, More Bad News For Our Democracy….

thomhartmann

Published on Jul 13, 2016

Thom talks about money in politics and why it’s bad news for our democracy.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Should The Banksters Be Allowed To Lie To Us?

thomhartmann

Published on Jul 13, 2016

Thom talks about the fact that investment advisors aren’t required to advise you in your best interest and the lawmakers who are trying to change that.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

RBS – Inside The Bank That Ran Out Of Money

thefrockdoctrine

Uploaded on Nov 26, 2011

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petit…

A BBC Documentary about the hubris at the heart of The Royal Bank of Scotland during the boom. And the ensuing demise under Sir Fred Goodwin.

Unfortunately less than an hour after I uploaded this film I received notification from youtube that EMI are claiming ownership of some of the soundtrack. I believe this has been done in error as the soundtrack parts in question are so brief as to inconsequential. As a result of this the video cannot be viewed in the US. I have disputed EMI’s claim and hopefully this will be cleared up soon.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Bernie Madoff : Scamming of America – The $50 Billion Ponzi Scheme

MLP Regal

Published on Mar 4, 2014

Forbes:”If indeed, $50 billion was lost, as apparently Madoff claims, it is the largest such fraud in history, and one that might even shame the conman whose name is attached to this brand of deception. In 1920, Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, began advertising that he could make a 50% return for investors in only 45 days. Incredibly, Ponzi began taking in money from all over New England and New Jersey. By July of 1920, he was making millions as people mortgaged their homes and invested their life savings. As with all frauds, he was discovered to have a jail record and was indicted on 86 counts of fraud. Some tens of millions of dollars were invested with him.”

In the streamlined (if somewhat simplified) opening of Ripped Off: Madoff and the Scamming of America, it is noted that “he puts a face on what we’ve all been feeling.” It’s a succinct and accurate characterization of the man who ran an elaborate, decades-long Ponzi scheme, bilking countless private investors and charities out of an estimated $65 billion dollars. The disclosure of his fraud, in the midst of the worst economic landscape since the Great Depression, grafted the face of a real-life villain onto the greed and excess of the Bush years–it’s hard to personify (or even understand) a credit default swap or a NINA loan, but this was a guy that we could point at and say, “Him! Get him!”

The History Channel’s short documentary examination of the Madoff scandal utilizes interviews with journalists, historians, and victims, in addition to some excellent archival footage (particularly those chilling tapes of Madoff holding court in the late 1990s as a wise elder statesman of the financial world). The special contains some valuable biographical information, not only of Madoff’s humble beginnings as a Queens-born stock broker, but of Carlo Ponzi (the namesake of the Ponzi scheme) and other con artists who operated in Madoff’s style, though perhaps not to his excess.

There’s plenty of solid information to be found here–how the lure of the Madoff investment was its exclusivity (he didn’t let just anyone throw away their money with him) and it’s slow steady performance (one victim notes, quite convincingly, “this was not a get-rich-quick scheme”); the tale of Harry Markopolis, the financial analyst who attempted, for the better part of a decade, to alert the SEC that Madoff was a crook; and the tragic story of Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, the hedge fund operator who responded to the news that his fund’s $1.4 billion investment with Madoff wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on by slashing his wrists in his Manhattan office.

The documentary moves a breakneck pace, a flurry of images and definitions and images and soundbites, though for all of the information it contains, it occasionally sacrifices nuance for the sake of a quick pulse. The misfortune of Ripped Off is that it follows Frontline’s superior examination of the scandal, The Madoff Affair, into the marketplace; that program was simply stronger, with better access to more people on the inside and a more in-depth analysis of the Madoff story. Taken on its own terms, however, Ripped Off is a solid, if less than spectacular, television documentary program.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

The men who crashed the world

Sarah Livesey Dip M.T

Uploaded on Oct 10, 2011

In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.

The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong?

Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.

Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced ‘light touch regulation’ – giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.

All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world’s biggest financial collapse.

Part 2:

Sarah Livesey Dip M.T

Uploaded on Oct 12, 2011

Part 3:

Sarah Livesey Dip M.T
Uploaded on Oct 12, 2011

Part 4

Sarah Livesey Dip M.T

 Uploaded on Oct 13, 2011

 

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

How Iceland defeated the Anglo-American Bankster Mafia

corazondelsur

Published on Sep 23, 2012

How Iceland defeated the Anglo-American Bankster Mafia 2008-2011.

As retold by the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímursson.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Iceland President: Let Banks Go Bankrupt

Gabbee

Published on Jan 26, 2013

Iceland President: We Decided to Let the Banks Fail
Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson on the recovery of the country’s economy

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Why Americans Lead the World in Food Waste – The Atlantic

Calories are cheap and people are picky.
Adam Chandler Jul 15, 2016

Americans waste an unfathomable amount of food. In fact, according to a Guardian report released this week, roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away—some 60 million tons (or $160 billion) worth of produce annually, an amount constituting “one third of all foodstuffs.” Wasted food is also the single biggest occupant in American landfills, the Environmental Protection Agency has found.

What causes this? A major reason is that food is cheaper in the United States than nearly anywhere else in the world, aided (controversially) by subsidies to corn, wheat, milk, and soybeans. But the great American squandering of produce appears to be a cultural dynamic as well, enabled in large part by a national obsession with the aesthetic quality of food. Fruits and vegetables, in addition to generally being healthful, have a tendency to bruise, brown, wilt, oxidize, ding, or discolor and that is apparently something American shoppers will not abide. For an American family of four, the average value of discarded produce is nearly $1,600 annually. (Globally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that one-third of all food grown is lost or wasted, an amount valued at nearly $3 trillion. )

…(read more).

Food-Matters
Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

The Rise And The Fall Of The Bankster (Full Movie)

E120, e130,