All ominous signs that the next financial crisis, inevitable under unsupportable Republican debt and relaxation of protections, will devastate the poor and middle class. No more 401Ks, no retirement, no SS or MC. They will be saddled with again bailing out Trump and his comrades (in the truest sense of the word "comrade"). Unless this country re=sets financial exploit limits and stops focusing on unsustainable high double and triple=digit quarterly profits as a gauge pf prosperity and solvency, we are doomed. Trump could not care less, nor could his rich Trumplican allies like Ross and Mnuchin. They already have more than they can spend, the Russians are receiving huge gains on their "loans" and the consumers are blindly and with complicity being set up for the fall. IF YOU VOTE REPUBLICAN, you are voting for your own financial suicide. Your children will be owned by the Chinese and Russians while Trump will be playing golf in a non-extradition country. Trump et all will be buying up failed banks and resources at a fire sale and YOU will be paying for it! Watch Mnuchin run!

NYT’s Peter Eavis and Keith Collins need to read the 2017 NYT review of Jesse Eisinger’s book. The NYT book review, below, indicates how prosecutors are “reined in by their politically appointed bosses.” Political appointees – both Democrats and Republicans – sabotage U.S. Justice Department prosecution against multi-trillion-dollar financial fraud – long before the 2008 “crash” –and into the present day. The NYT review points out that for prosecutors, “Conducting the criminal investigation of an executive” would be “jeopardizing a future partnership at a prestigious law firm” that defends fraud collar financial criminals. ProPublica’s Eisinger observes that U.S. prosecutors routinely decide against convicting most of America’s biggest financial criminals, essentially encouraging them to keep trillions of dollars of stolen assets. For decades, prosecutors have been addicted to tacit future payoffs, knowing that they will be paid soon enough–upon leaving government to take money from financial criminals–in the charade of defending them from the government that won’t convict them. That’s why honest American middle-class citizens cannot compete with Fraud Street’s kleptocrats who continue to destroy capitalism. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chickenshit-club-jes...

I was sad to see no mention of the abuse of regulation of credit default swaps. The State's attorney generals have the power to correct this. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-the-largest-banks-ar...

No one at the banks were held liable for their actions and it won't be any different in the next recession.

NYT: why all the parentheses, especially in the headlines? example: (cheapish), (mostly), the headline on this one (Big) -- UGH. I get that NYT is trying to get young eyeballs, but, it's just sounding inappropriately juvenile -- like those adults (who have plenty to offer, being themselves :)), jamming themselves into juvenile fashion. Instead of being an example of good writing, the NYT has become another rag. I have stopped recommending it to anyone I know, and have stopped telling my young adult kids to read it. I'm embarrassed -- and I know, I don't count. No worries, got this off my chest.

I'm not sure how you would ever remove short-term borrowing from the banking industry. That's how our entire financial system works. You wouldn't be able to generate liquidity at all without short-term borrowing. It's called the velocity of money. The Fed isn't out there printing M2 money supply. They control the non-cash money supply through rates. The first is the prime rate. The rate at which banks borrow. The banks then use their borrowed cash to loan to other borrowers. The Fed controls how much they can lend. That's called the reserve rate. How much cash the bank needs to have on hand to cover their outstanding debts. Your savings account. Let's say the RR is 20% and you deposit $100 in savings. The bank will keep $20 dollars and loan out the other $80. Let's say the PR is 1% compounded daily. That means the borrower is paying 80 cents a day to borrow your $80 dollars in savings. However, the borrower is another bank. Bank B takes 20% of your $80 dollars and loans the remaining $64 dollars to Bank C. If you do the math, there are now $100 plus $80 plus $64, or $244, in outstanding liabilities. Your $100 in savings has been multiplied nearly two and a half times. That's how money is created.

Just to put things in perspective, when I was a twenty-something, bank savings accounts paid 5% interest. CDs paid upwards of 7%. Treasuries paid 4%, and they were exempt from federal and state tax. This made it possible for the middle class to amass a respectable amount of wealth without incurring unreasonable risk. Now savings accounts pay 1% or less, CDs pay 1-2%, and Treasuries pay less than 3%. The impact on the middle class is this: We have to put our money in the stock market if we want any decent return on investment. But, of course, that means we incur high risk. Unlike savings accounts, it is possible to lose capital when investing in stocks. And most of us don't have the time to carefully research and follow stock market developments because we're too busy going to work and raising our families. In my opinion, the underlying motivation for the changes in the finance industry that pierced the wall between savings banks and investment banks is this: Lure salary and wage income into the stock market where it can be preyed upon by stock brokers and traders.

Let's never forget, wrt "significant influence in Washington", that there's also still no meaningful financial penalty or jail time for executives. When they not only evade punishment but get giant exit bonuses simply for a well-written contract, there can never be a change in their culture; and people happy to vote in banks' biggest defender because Butter Emails have betrayed their country and neighbor, one and all. "Congress doesn't regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress. Saying ‘please do the right thing’ is kind of naïve." —Bernie ----- "In an affidavit filed last year as part of a shareholder lawsuit, a former manager of a Wells Fargo branch (which the company called “stores”) described some of that abuse." Ah, yes, calling bank branches "stores". It's just another part of the perverse Product-Service Marketing Inversion I've seen a lot of, which also includes calling financial services "products", foists DRM on our own computers, turns "watching and reading the news" into "consuming media" (I didn't know journalism and B-roll were edible?!), and brands customers "consumers" and "guests". I'm not sure if there's a law that forces the megacorps and their marketers to say that, or if it's just a way to cloud (as with "cloud"-computing) buyer thinking; but when I see someone say things like "The customer is always right—that's why we call them 'guests'", my opinion of them takes a rocket-propelled tumble.

One only has to read the latest Economist cover story -- "Has Finance Been Fixed? Ten years after Lehman" -- to fear that we are heading for another financial collapse. It will be because the fix is in...by Trump and his goons.

Biggest fraud. American Banks have been rigging the "Prime Rate" for 30 years and no one is looking into it. The U.S. government is part of the fraud.