Carl Herman, Contributing Writer

Activist Post

Reuters and wanttoknow.info provide prima facie evidence that the US 1% runs Wall Street as rigged-casino gambling to transfer wealth from the 99% to themselves. The amount of money fraudulently gambled is not millions of dollars, not billions, not even tens of trillions, but over five hundred trillion ($532,000,000,000,000).

Look at Demonocracy’s images to get an idea of this magnitude of money.

Let this sink in: $532 trillion means that the 1% US banksters gamble over $5 million dollars for every US household and $1.7 million for every American.

It also means that the 1% has cooperation from “leadership” in Congress, law enforcement, and almost all corporate media to have this gambling as the core of the 99%’s mortgages and pension funds, with the criminal fraud of representing this as “investments,” “regulated,” and “fair.”

Ending global poverty would be accomplished with an annual investment of $100 billion a year for ten years. This would save the lives of a million children who die from preventable poverty each month, is less than 0.7% of the developed countries’ GNI, has reduced population growth rates in every historical case, and is the best way the CIA concludes to reduce terrorism. The annual amount to end poverty is 0.02% of what the top five US banks gamble every year.

Excerpts from Reuters and www.wanttoknow.info:

(Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows…. Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn’t brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases. OCC’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities: Third Quarter 2011 December 2011, OCC (U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of National Banks)

http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivatives/dq311.pdf The OCC’s quarterly report on trading revenues and bank derivatives activities is based on Call Report information provided by all insured U.S. commercial banks and trust companies, reports filed by U.S. financial holding companies, and other published data. The notional amount of derivatives held by insured U.S. commercial banks decreased $1.4 trillion, or 0.6%, from the second quarter of 2011 to $248 trillion. Notional derivatives are 5.7% higher than at the same time last year. Derivatives activity in the U.S. banking system continues to be dominated by a small group of large financial institutions. Five large commercial banks represent 96% of the total banking industry notional amounts. Insured commercial banks have more limited legal authorities than do their holding companies. Note: Graphs in this report show that the holding companies for the top five banks also control massive amounts of derivatives totaling $326 trillion! The holding companies JPMorgan Chase, BofA, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs have over $311 trillion in derivatives, 95% of the total U.S. market. So these banks and their holding companies combined own $532 trillion in derivatives, equivalent to roughly $75,000 for every person on the planet. What are the bankers doing? If the above link fails, click here.

After 15 years of my own research after US political leadership reneged on all promises (public and private) to end poverty after we led to create the Microcredit Summit in 1997, here’s my best explanation of what’s driving economics:

How an economics teacher presents Occupy’s economic argument, victory

Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history. His hobby is research, education, and lobbying for improved public policy. A principal project of his 30-years’ experience working with US “leadership” in government, economics and corporate media was to grow the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, that led to two UN Summits (1990 World Summit for Children – the largest meeting of heads of state in world history – and the 1997 Microcredit Summit – topic of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize). Because US political leadership of both parties reneged on each and every public and private promise to end poverty, and US corporate media behaved as their political propagandists, Carl shifted his hobby to “follow the money.” His conclusions are explained and documented in these two articles (academic/professional voice, and more passionate citizen voice):

Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic economics

Common Sense for new American Revolution: revolt from US government by dicts

He can be reached at [email protected]