Taibbi Explains The Citibank Decision

Nov 29th, 2011

"Wanking Bankers"

Nov 19th, 2011

An Irishman who tells it like it is regarding the real villains on Wall Street. He is right... they are "fuck-shytes."

Quote Of The Day - Defending The Occupation Edition, cont..

Oct 31st, 2011

"When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil shit Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money."
-- Matt Taibbi, once again confronting the chin high levels of manure that anti-Occupation critics are shoveling.

Quote Of The Day

Oct 22nd, 2011

 © Copyright 2011 F. Grey Parker

"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... 
totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations." 
-- Aldous Huxley

Quote Of The Day

Oct 7th, 2011

"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master...Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware."
--Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890

The "Anonymous" Warning

Oct 2nd, 2011

Pretty strong stuff directed at the NYPD's now infamous serial-macer and his fellow white shirts.


Elsewhere, The Australian is reporting that the U.S. Government is warning to firms to prepare for potential breaches of their networks:

"The US Department of Homeland Security has warned financial companies to be vigilant about a cyber security threat from Anonymous.

Wanted for shutting down websites as high profile as that of the CIA, a recently released Department of Homeland Security bulletin said the group "will continue to exploit vulnerable publicly available web servers, computer networks and other digital information mediums for the foreseeable future".

"Outside Approved Channels"

Sept 28th, 2011

If a handful of Tea Party activists, with marching orders from a manufacturing and petrol conglomerate, show up almost anywhere, anytime and carry American flags made in China... well, by golly, that's "news." But, when more than 7,000 citizens without pre-printed talking points gather to protest systemized corruption and inequality in the heart of the most important financial district on the face of the Earth?

cue crickets...

For the most part, American news outlets have taken two approaches to the Occupy Wall Street action; disrespectfully dismissive reports or none. It is ridiculous. It was also thoroughly predictable.

Glenn Greenwald puts it succinctly:

"It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive andscornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke."

Whatever structural critiques can be made about the movement, an area where Greenwald and I don't see things eye to eye, the broad refusal to objectively report on the events in lower Manhattan is a betrayal of the most basic principles of journalism.

Media Ignores Wall Street Protest

August 4th, 2011

Perhaps the headline should have read, Media Ignores Wall Street Protest AGAIN. In any event, hundreds of angry citizens voiced their opposition to the debt deal on Tuesday by descending upon America's financial center.

What About Derivatives?

July 20th, 2011
F. Grey Parker

The foggy world of derivatives, the same non-transparent mechanisms that nearly led to a global rollover three years ago, is still fundamentally opaque. They almost drove us into total depression before and that was without the intentional brinkmanship and economic sabotage now being seen from some of our own "conservative" representatives.

If No One Sees It...

May 13th, 2011
by F. Grey Parker
UPDATE: As if the original media blackout weren't enough, it was brought to my attention that the video has been disabled. A new has been found to illustrate just what the so-called MSM ignores

photo copyright 2011 Politico

In the weeks leading up to the dreaded annual federal tax deadline last month, the news cycle was dominated by coverage of the Tea Party and it's many rallies. This was big news. After all, some of the rallies drew as many as 200 people.

One event, covered with near breathless importance by Bloomberg, managed to achieve a total attendance of, gasp, "dozens."

We were subjected to endless coverage of such dynamic and essential leaders as Rep Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Indiana's own Rep. Mike Pence. There were 'don't tread on me' signs aplenty. FOX, CNN, MSNBC and just about every other outlet with a camera or a microphone hyped, parsed and dissected handfuls of "anti-government" outliers.

The point is that you heard about these gatherings. Or you read about them. Which is worth more than a passing thought because what you probably haven't heard about is something that happened yesterday.


THE MARCH ON WALL STREET - #ONMAY12 #USUNCUT from Rhodes Pictures on Vimeo.

From The Nation:

"More than 20,000 protesters descended upon Wall Street Thursday to demand an end to Mayor Bloomberg’s draconian education cuts and his soft touch approach to billion-dollar companies. The May 12 event began as a series of splinter cell protests in the radius surrounding Wall Street that ultimately converged on the financial district."

That's right 20,000 Americans marched on Wall Street. Seriously, it happened. It received none of the every hour, on the hour analysis we can expect when handfuls of Tea Party folks show up in the middle of nowhere. There were no endless interviews from reporters on the scene. You did not hear of this because it was decided for you that you did not need to.

This is not merely irresponsible, it is dangerous.

Taibbi Likens Wall Street To Russian Oligarchy

Jan 7th, 2011


Pretty amazing stuff:
"Question: How did your work in Moscow help you uncover hypocrisy in America? 

Matt Taibbi: One of the reasons I was so attracted to this Wall Street story was when I first started looking at it in the summer of 2008, I was continually struck by how much it reminded me of a lot of the dynamic that I had seen covering the Russian government and the Russian state where there was this oligarchical system that they had over there.  There were a very tiny collection of super-connected industrial figures, these oligarchs.  They were bankers mostly. And there was this circular process of government gives tons of money to banker; banker then scams the public and returns money to politicians who in turn keep giving money back to the bankers. And that whole circular process is very similar to what is going on here in the States now where we have a small group of very, very politically connected banks who give massive campaign contributions to both parties and they’re rewarded with selective regulation and bailouts and then the money comes back again.  I think if I hadn’t seen that in the more crude form that you see in Russia where—stuff is just right out in the open in Russia sometimes; they don’t even really hide it—if I hadn’t seen that it would have been harder for me to see this story.

Recorded on November 22, 2010
Interviewed by Andrew Dermont
Directed by Jonathan Fowler
Produced by Elizabeth Rodd"