The ‘End Game Memo’

Greg Palast is an investigative journalist. In an article in Vice, he says that a source has given him a secret memo whose “content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn’t believe it.” The document that he calls the ‘End Game Memo’ reveals how top US treasury officials secretly colluded with the heads of major banks to implement the deregulations that led to the financial collapse. Once again, this was something that was suspected but it makes a difference to have it actually spelled out. [Read more…]

NSA revelations may cost US companies between $22 and $35 billion

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation has released a report where they say that the recent NSA revelations are going to cost American companies that provide cloud computing and encryption services quite a lot of money, since many international businesses may be reluctant to give their business to US companies that can be compelled to provide the government with backdoor access to all their information. [Read more…]

Guilty bankers don’t even have to admit guilt

I have been railing about the fact that despite the massive damage that the major banks did to ordinary people and the economy leading up to and during the recent financial crisis, not a single major bank executive was even threatened with jail time. Instead the banks were merely fined amounts that seem impressive to ordinary people but are a pittance to the banks who can write it off as the cost of doing business. [Read more…]

Making sure the poor are also miserable

Most if us live within our means and keep some sort of rough budget of what we can afford and it usually works to keep spending in check. It is tempting to think that that is what keeps us out of debt, and one of the easiest traps that those of us who are not poor can fall into is thinking that the poor get into financial trouble because they suffer from a lack of that kind of planning. [Read more…]

The dismal state of the US banking industry

The Daily Show takes a close look at the banking sector in the US where, unlike in many countries, the banks seem to be more like crime syndicates than staid financial institutions.

In the first clip, the show discusses yet another revelation about how the banks and ratings agencies colluded to play fast and loose with other people’s money while they got rich, knowing that what they were doing was corrupt and likely to cause a collapse. [Read more…]