Tag Archives | Crime of Our Time

Are Banksters Too Big To Jail?

By Danny Schechter on May 24, 2011 in News 6

Why are we banking on banks to a promote economic recovery? HBO’s “Too Big To Fail” should have been about banksters “too big to jail.”

This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”

It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.

Based on the work of a New York Times reporter, it offered a skillfully-made but conventional narrative which, like most TV shows, showcase events but miss their deeper context and background.

We heard all the explanations, save one.

There was greed, ambition, ego and money lust. There were personal rivalries and ideological battles, parochial agendas and narrow self-interest.… Read the rest

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Why Wall Street Is Winning

By Danny Schechter on May 11, 2011 in News 36

Photo: RMajouji (CC)

A Hated Financial Center Is Bouncing Back. How Did They Do It?

Two years ago as financial reform was put on the U.S. Congressional agenda, a skeptical Senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, spoke of the power of the banks over the country’s legislative process.

“They run the place,” he said matter of factly.

The comment was then treated as a sidebar in the few newspapers that carried it, perhaps because it hinted at how interests, not ideology, dictate what happens on Capitol Hill.

The remark about a shadowy power structure far more important than all the partisan in-fighting that dominates the news is worth recalling as a way of explaining how little has been done to rain in Wall Street in the years since its crash virtually wrecked the global economy.

It is also worth realizing that the people who “run the place” usually do so in ways that rarely get high profile media scrutiny or even public attention.… Read the rest

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Most U.S. Stock Trades Are Made by Computers, Not People: Is “High Frequency Trading” Manipulating the Stock Market?

By ralph on October 11, 2010 in News 16

I came across this topic while working on the Disinformation-published The Crime Of Our Time, written by Plunder filmmaker Danny Schechter. To me, this is one of those topics, the media should be more concerned about, (60 Minutes did report on this last night), but I wonder if the fear of massive manipulation destroying confidence in the entire system is causing many to look the other way. 60 Minutes reports:

It may surprise you to learn that most of the stock trades in the U.S. are no longer being made by human beings, but by robot computers capable of buying and selling thousands of different securities in the time it takes you to blink an eye. These supercomputers — which actually decide which stocks to buy and sell — are operating on highly secret instructions programmed into them by math wizards who may or may not know anything about the value of the companies that are being traded.

It’s known as “high frequency trading,” a phenomenon that’s swept over much of Wall Street in the past few years and played a supporting role in the mini market crash last spring that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge 600 points in 15 minutes. Most people outside of the industry know very little, if anything, about it. But the Securities and Exchange Commission and members of Congress have begun asking some tough questions about its usefulness, potential dangers, and suspicions that some people may be using computers to manipulate the market.

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