Corporate Governance

The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions
Glenn Greenwald

A new PBS Frontline report examines a profound failure of justice that should be causing serious social unrest


January 23, 2013

(updated below - Update II)

PBS' Frontline program on Tuesday night broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.

What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with immunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.

Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs (who, just by the way, overwhelmingly supported Obama's 2008 presidential campaign) as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig put it two weeks ago when expressing anger over the DOJ's persecution of Aaron Swartz: "we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House." (Indeed, as "The Untouchables" put it: while no senior Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, "many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers" have been).

As I documented at length in my 2011 book on America's two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is overwhelming. That evidence directly negates the primary excuse by Breuer (previously offered by Obama himself) that the bad acts of Wall Street were not criminal.
breuer frontline

Numerous documents prove that executives at leading banks, credit agencies, and mortgage brokers were falsely touting assets as sound that knew were junk: the very definition of fraud. As former Wall Street analyst Yves Smith wrote in her book ECONned: "What went on at Lehman and AIG, as well as the chicanery in the CDO [collateralized debt obligation] business, by any sensible standard is criminal." Even lifelong Wall Street defender Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chair, said in Congressional testimony that "a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud."

A New York Times editorial in August explained that the DOJ's excuse for failing to prosecute Wall Street executives - that it was too hard to obtain convictions - "has always defied common sense - and all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks' reckless and lawless activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive speculation." The Frontline program interviewed former prosecutors, Senate staffers and regulators who unequivocally said the same: it is inconceivable that the DOJ could not have successfully prosecuted at least some high-level Wall Street executives - had they tried.

What's most remarkable about all of this is not even Wall Street had the audacity to expect the generosity of largesse they ended up receiving. "The Untouchables" begins by recounting the massive financial devastation the 2008 crisis wrought - "the economy was in ruins and bankers were being blamed" - and recounts:

"In 2009, Wall Street bankers were on the defensive, worried they could be held criminally liable for fraud. With a new administration, bankers and their attorneys expected investigations and at least some prosecutions."

Indeed, the show recalls that both in Washington and the country generally, "there was broad support for prosecuting Wall Street." Nonetheless: "four years later, there have been no arrests of any senior Wall Street executives."

In response to the DOJ's excuse-making that these criminal cases are too hard to win, numerous experts - Senators, top Hill staffers, former DOJ prosecutors - emphasized the key point: Obama officials never even tried. One of the heroes of "The Untouchables", former Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman, worked tirelessly to provide the DOJ with all the funds it needed to ensure probing criminal investigations and even to pressure and compel them to do so. Yet when he and his staff would meet with Breuer and other top DOJ officials, they would proudly tout the small mortgage brokers they were pursuing, in response to which Kafuman and his staff said: "No. Don't show me small-time mortgage guys in California. This is totally about what went on in Wall Street. . . . We are talking about investigating senior level Wall Street executives, even at the Board level". (The same Lanny Breuer was recently seen announcing that the banking giant HSBC would face no criminal prosecution for its money laundering of funds for designated terrorist groups and drug networks on the ground that the bank was too big to risk prosecuting).

As Kaufman and his staffers make clear, Obama officials were plainly uninterested in pursuing criminal accountability for Wall Street. One former staffer to both Biden and Kaufman, Jeff Connaughton, wrote a book in 2011 - "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins" - devoted to alerting the nation that the Obama DOJ refused even to try to find criminal culprits on Wall Street. In the book, this career-Democratic-aide-turned-whistleblower details how the levers of Washington power are used to shield and protect high-level Wall Street executives, many of whom have close ties to the leaders of both parties and themselves are former high-level government officials. This is a system, he makes clear, that is constituted to ensure that those executives never face real accountability even for their most egregious and destructive crimes.

The reason there have been no efforts made to criminally investigate is obvious. Former banking regulator and current securities Professor Bill Black told Bill Moyers in 2009 that "Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong." In the documentary "Inside Job", the economist Nouriel Roubini, when asked why there have been no such investigations, replied: "Because then you'd find the culprits." Underlying all of that is what the Senate's second-highest ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin, admitted in 2009: the banks "frankly own the place".

The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.

The real mystery from all of this is that it has not led to greater social unrest. To some extent, both the early version of the Tea Party and the Occupy movements were spurred by the government's protection of Wall Street at the expense of everyone else. Still, Americans continue to be plagued by massive unemployment, foreclosures, the threat of austerity and economic insecurity while those who caused those problems have more power and profit than ever. And they watch millions of their fellow citizens be put in cages for relatively minor offenses while the most powerful are free to commit far more serious crimes with complete impunity. Far less injustice than this has spurred serious unrest in other societies.

Introduction


According to The World Bank, it is,

"a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. We are not a bank in the common sense. We are made up of two unique development institutions owned by 184 member countries—the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA).



Each institution plays a different but supportive role in our mission of global poverty reduction and the improvement of living standards. The IBRD focuses on middle income and creditworthy poor countries, while IDA focuses on the poorest countries in the world.



Together we provide low-interest loans, interest-free credit and grants to developing countries for education, health, infrastructure, communications and many other purposes." 1

High-minded words like "our mission of global poverty reduction and the improvement of living standards" would lead the reader to believe that the World Bank is some benevolent and global welfare organization.



Why is it then, that The World Bank joins the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization as organizations that people around the world just love to hate?

In reality, the World Bank carries its weight, along with the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, to forcibly integrate minor countries of the world into its own brand of capitalistic democracy.







World Bank Beginnings


A sibling of the IMF, the World Bank was born out of the U.N. Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in July, 1944.



The original name given to the World Bank was the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and reflects its original mission: to rebuild Europe after the devastation of World War II. The name "World Bank" was not actually adopted until 1975.

Both the IBRD and the IMF were created as independent specialized agencies of the United Nations, of which they remain to this day.

The word "Development" in the IBRD name was rather insignificant at the time because most of the southern hemisphere was still under colonial rule, with each colonial master responsible for the business activities in their respective countries.

Note: It is argued by some that there was an original desire by banking elites to put an end to colonialism by restructuring investment and trade patterns in colonized countries. This paper will not deal with this issue, but it should be noted that this has been exactly what has happened, in many cases being aided by the operations of the World Bank and the IMF.

As a "reconstruction" bank, however, the World Bank was impotent. It ultimately loaned only $497(US) million for reconstruction projects. The Marshall Plan, by contrast, became the true engine of the reconstruction of Europe by loaning over $41(US) billion by 1953.

The primary architects of the World Bank were Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, both of whom are summarized Global Banking: The International Monetary Fund as follows:

"Such is the moral fiber and intellectual credentials of the creators of the IMF [and the World Bank]: One was an English ideologue economist with a markedly global bent, and the other a corrupt and high-ranking U.S. government official who was a top Soviet spy."2






Structure of the World Bank


Today, the World Bank consists of two primary units: The already-mentioned IBRD and the International Development Association (IDA), which was created in 1960.

The IBRD lends only to governments who are credit-worthy; in other words, there is an expectation that they will repay their loans. The IDA, by contrast, only lends to governments who are not credit-worthy and are usually the poorest nations. Together, they create a "one-two" punch in global lending to any government that they are able to talk into borrowing. The U.S. currently contributes about $1 billion per year of taxpayer funds to the IDA.

Three other affiliates combine with the World Bank, to be collectively called the World Bank Group:


The International Finance Corporation (IFC) - Founded in 1956, lends directly to the private sector in developing counties.


The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) -Founded in 1988, provides guarantees to investors in developing countries against losses caused by noncommercial risks.


The International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) - Founded in 1966, provides international facilities for conciliation and arbitration of investment disputes.


Headquarters for the World Bank is Washington, DC. It employs approximately 7,000 in the Washington complex, and another 3,000 in 109 offices scattered throughout member countries.

IBRD funds its lending operations by selling AAA-rated bonds and other debt instruments to other banks, pension funds, insurance companies and corporations around the world.



By contrast, the IDA is funded by (taxpayer) contributions from member countries. Annual levels of lending is roughly equal between IBRD and IDA. While the IFC generates its own capital in open markets, MIGA and ICSID receive the majority of their funding from the World Bank, much of which is taxpayer funded.

Ownership of the World Bank consists of voting shares held by member countries, according to size and contributions. Currently, the U.S. is the largest shareholder with 16.4 percent of total votes. The next largest voting blocks are Japan (7.9 percent) and Germany (4.5 percent).



Because major decisions require an 85 percent super-majority vote, the U.S. can effectively veto any change (100% -16.4% = 83.6%).







American Hegemony


It should be noted that the United Nations is headquartered in the United States, on land originally donated to it by David Rockefeller. The Bretton Woods Conference was held in New Hampshire. Every president of the World Bank has hailed from the United States. It is no wonder that the rest of the world views the World Bank as an American operation.

There has been an unwritten but traditional rule that the World Bank president will always be an American, while the president of the IMF is European. (A recent exception to this is the current IMF president, who is Canadian)

It is instructive to review the past presidents of the World Bank, because it demonstrates which elite cabal is really in control of World Bank operations. In turn, this will point strongly to the real beneficiaries of the World Bank hegemony.



The complete biographies and accomplishments of these men far exceed the available space in this report, so only a few highlights are noted.

1. Eugene Meyer. June to December, 1946.

Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 1930-1933; owner of the Washington Post; Member, Council on Foreign Relations; agent of Lazard Freres, Brown Brothers, Harriman; appointed head of the War Finance Corporation during WWI by Woodrow Wilson.

2. John J. McCloy. March 1947 to April 1949.

Member and chair of the Council on Foreign Relations; Chairman, Ford Foundation; Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank; lawyer whose firm was council to Chase Manhattan Bank.

3. Eugene Black. July 1949 to December 1962.

Chairman, Board of Directors for the Federal Reserve System (1933-34); senior vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank; Member, Council on Foreign Relations; member of Bilderbergers; created the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association at the World Bank.

4. George Woods. January 1963 to March 1968.

Vice president of Harris, Forbes & Co.; vice president of Chase Bank; vice president of and board member of First Boston Corp. (one of the largest U.S. investment banking firms).

5. Robert Strange McNamara. April 1968 to June 1981.

President and director of Ford Motor Company; Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; member of Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations and Bilderbergers; honorary council trustee of Aspen Institute. Personally negotiated China’s entrance into the World Bank.

6. A.W. Clausen. July 1981 to June 1986.

President, CEO and chairman of Bank of America; member, Trilateral Commission; member, Bretton-Woods Committee.

7. Barber B. Conable. July 1986 to August 1991.

Member of U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 to 1985; member Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations; senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute; board member, New York Stock Exchange; member, Commission on Global Governance.

8. Lewis T. Preston. September 1991 to May 1995.

President, CEO and chairman of J.P. Morgan & Co., and chairman of the executive committee; vice president of Morgan Guaranty Trust Co.; member and treasurer of Council on Foreign Relations; director of General Electric.

9. James D. Wolfensohn. June 1995 to 2005

Executive partner and head of the investment banking department, Salomon Brothers (New York); executive deputy chairman and managing director, Schroders Ltd. (London); director, Rockefeller Foundation; board member, Rockefeller University; honorary trustee, Brookings Institution; Director, Population Council (founded by John D. Rockefeller); member, Council on Foreign Relations.

10. Paul Wolfowitz. 2005 - present.

Deputy Secretary of Defense (2001-2005); member, Trilateral Commission; member, Council on Foreign Relations; member, Bilderbergers; director of the neocon flagship, Project for the New American Century (PNAC); member of the elite "Vulcans" group that advised George W. Bush on foreign policy during the 2000 presidential elections (other neocon members included Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Richard Perle); member of and frequent speaker at Social Democrats USA (successor to the Socialist Party of America).

An important pattern emerges here. These men frame a 50-year time period stretching from 1946 to 2006.



The early players have long since passed away. There was no social connection between the early and latter presidents.



Yet, seven out of ten are members of the Council on Foreign Relations; four are members of the Trilateral Commission, seven have major global bank affiliations (Chase Manhattan, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, First Boston, Brown Brothers, Harriman, Salomon Brothers, Federal Reserve), and four men were directly connected to Rockefeller interests.

A detailed analysis is not required to see the pattern emerge: Global bankers (the same old crowd) and their related global proxies, have completely dominated the World Bank for its entire history. Collectively and individually, they have always operated purposefully and consistently for their own self-interested, financial gain.



Why would anyone expect even one of them to act out of character (e.g., be concerned for world poverty) while directing the helm of the World Bank?







Purposes of convenience


Whatever the true purposes of the World Bank and IMF might have been, the publicly displayed purposes have changed when it was convenient and necessary.

In 1944, reconstruction of war torn countries after WW II was the important issue.

When the Bank demonstrated its impotence by loaning only a pittance of less than $500 million, it changed its pubic image by positioning itself as a check and balance to the expansion of communism. Without the World Bank to engage all of the lesser countries of the world who were susceptible to communist influence, communism might spread and ultimately threaten to end the cold war with an ugly nuclear Holocaust.

Public and legislative sentiment ultimately fizzled and the Bank was again under heavy criticism when Robert Strange McNamara was appointed president.







Poverty Reduction - Trojan Horse


As noted above, McNamara was president of the World Bank from 1968 through 1981. He was also among the original membership of the Trilateral Commission, founded in 1973 by Rockefeller and Brzezinski, and was widely considered to be a central figure in the global elite of his day.

It was McNamara who caused the focus of the World Bank to fall on poverty and poverty reduction. This has essentially remained the siren call right into the present. This was a brilliant maneuver because who would ever say they are anti-poor or pro-poverty? Any attack on the Bank would thus be viewed as an attack on poverty relief itself. From 1968 onward, the battle cry of the Bank has been "eliminate poverty."

This is clearly seen on the About Us page of the World Bank web site, where these words are prominently displayed:

"Each institution (IBRD and IDA) plays a different but supportive role in our mission of global poverty reduction and the improvement of living standards." [emphasis added]

However, Article I of The Articles of Agreement of the IBRD, as amended on February 16, 1989, state its official Purposes as follows:

(i) To assist in the reconstruction and development of territories of members by facilitating the investment of capital for productive purposes, including the restoration of economies destroyed or disrupted by war, the reconversion of productive facilities to peacetime needs and the encouragement of the development of productive facilities and resources in less developed countries.

(ii) To promote private foreign investment by means of guarantees or participations in loans and other investments made by private investors; and when private capital is not available on reasonable terms, to supplement private investment by providing, on suitable conditions, finance for productive purposes out of its own capital, funds raised by it and its other resources.

(iii) To promote the long-range balanced growth of international trade and the maintenance of equilibrium in balances of payments by encouraging international investment for the development of the productive resources of members, thereby assisting in raising productivity, the standard of living and conditions of labor in their territories.

(iv) To arrange the loans made or guaranteed by it in relation to international loans through other channels so that the more useful and urgent projects, large and small alike, will be dealt with first.

(v) To conduct its operations with due regard to the effect of international investment on business conditions in the territories of members and, in the immediate postwar years, to assist in bringing about a smooth transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy.

The Bank shall be guided in all its decisions by the purposes set forth above.3

Note that the word "poverty" does not appear even once. The reason is clear: Whatever "business as usual" might be with the Bank, it has nothing to do with poverty or poverty reduction. Rather, the Bank is in business to loan money by stimulating borrowing demand in developing countries, with a view to increasing international trade. The primary beneficiaries of international trade are the global corporations, and the poor are actually poorer as a result.

This hypocrisy was noted even by Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist, Joseph Stiglitz, as late as 2002:

As far as these ’client countries’ were concerned, it was a charade in which the politicians pretended to do something to redress the problems [of poverty] while financial interests worked to preserve as much of the status quo as they could. 4






Liberalization and Structural Adjustments

When Alden Clausen (also an original member of the Trilateral Commission) took over the reins from Robert McNamara in 1981, a massive shakeup in the bank occurred. As Stiglitz noted,

"In the early 1980’s a purge occurred inside the World Bank, in its research department, which guided the Bank’s thinking and direction."5

Clausen, a true core member of the global elite, brought in a new chief economist with radical new ideas:

"...Ann Krueger, an international trade specialist, best known for her work on ’rent seeking’ -- how special interests use tariffs and other protectionist measures to increase their incomes at the expense of others... Krueger saw government as the problem. Free markets were the solution to the problems of developing countries." 6

This was precisely the time when so-called liberalization policies and Structural Adjustments were forcefully implemented as a means of forcing countries to privatize industries.



If governments were the problem, then they should turn over areas of critical infrastructure to private multinational corporations which, according to Krueger, could perform better and more efficiently than bureaucratic government bodies.

Not surprisingly, most of the career staff economists left the Bank in the early 1980’s in protest over Clausen and Krueger’s policies.







How the Money Laundry Works


The mechanism and operation of Structural Adjustments, along with the tight cooperation between the IMF and the World Bank, was adequately covered in The August Review’s Global Banking: The International Monetary Fund.



The following well-documented example will be the "picture worth a thousand words" in the Review’s effort to profile self-serving Bank and global corporate policies. It also demonstrates the "tag-team" approach used by the Bank and IMF in the prying open of closed markets in uncooperative countries.



It’s a rather tangled story, but careful reading will produce understanding of how the "system" works.









Water Wars

In 1998, the IMF approved a loan of $138 million for Bolivia it described as designed to help the country control inflation and stabilize its domestic economy.



The loan was contingent upon Bolivia’s adoption of a series of "structural reforms," including privatization of "all remaining public enterprises," including water services.



Once these loans were approved, Bolivia was under intense pressure from the World Bank to ensure that no public subsidies for water existed and that all water projects would be run on a "cost recovery" basis, meaning that citizens must pay the full construction, financing, operation and maintenance costs of a water project. Because water is an essential human need and is crucial for agriculture, cost recovery pricing is unusual, even in the developed world.

In this context, Cochabamba, the third largest city in Bolivia, put its water works up for sale in late 1999. Only one entity, a consortium led by Bechtel subsidiary Aguas del Tunari, offered a bid, and it was awarded a 40-year concession to provide water. The exact details of the negotiation were kept secret, and Bechtel claimed that the numbers within the contract are "intellectual property."



But, it later came to light that the price included the financing by Cochabamba’s citizens of a part of a huge dam construction project being undertaken by Bechtel, even though water from the Misicuni Dam Project would be 600% more expensive than alternative water sources.



Cochabambans were also required to pay Bechtel a contractually guaranteed 15% profit, meaning that the people of Cochabamba were asked to pay for investments while the private sector got the profits.

Immediately upon receiving the concession, the company raised water rates by as much as 400% in some instances. These increases came in an area where the minimum wage is less than $100 a month. After the price hike, self-employed men and women were estimated to pay one quarter of their monthly earnings for water.

The city’s residents were outraged. In January of 2000, a broad coalition called the Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life, or simply La Coordinadora, led by a local worker, Oscar Olivera, called for peaceful demonstrations.



Cochabamba was shut down for four days by a general strike and transportation stoppage, but the demonstrations stopped once the government promised to intervene to lower water rates. However, when there were no results in February, the demonstrations started again. This time, however, demonstrators were met with tear gas and police opposition, leaving 175 injured and two youths blinded.

The threat that privatization of public services under GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) poses to democracy were demonstrated in March 2000. La Coordinadora held an unofficial referendum, counted nearly 50,000 votes, and announced that 96% of the respondents favored the cancellation of the contract with Aguas del Tunari. They were told by the water company that there was nothing to negotiate.

On April 4, the residents of the city returned to the streets, shutting down the city. Again, they were met with police resistance, and on April 8, the government declared martial law. The Bolivian military shot a 17-year-old protester in the face, killing him. However, the protests continued, and, on April 10, the government relented, signing an accord that agreed to the demand of the protesters to reverse the water concession. The people of Cochabamba took back their water.

Unfortunately, this inspiring story didn’t simply end with the victory for the people of Cochabamba.



On February 25, 2002, Bechtel filed a grievance using investor protections granted in a Bolivia-Netherlands Bilateral Investment Agreement at the World Bank, demanding a $25 million dollar payment as compensation for lost profits.7



Note: Bechtel Engineering is the largest civil engineering company in the world. It is privately owned by the Bechtel family. For many years, general counsel (and vice-president) for Bechtel was none other than original Trilateral Commission member Caspar Weinberger.

Since then, the World Bank has granted additional "poverty reduction" loans to Bolivia. Carefully read the Bank’s current (2006) assessment on Bolivia found on its web site:

"Bolivia is experiencing a time of difficulty and uncertainty. In recent months, various political and social disturbances have escalated with serious consequences, culminating in the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003, and the appointment of Vice-President Carlos Mesa as President.



The current administration inherits a difficult economic, political and social climate, which is compounded by long-term issues, such as profound inequality, an economy that has been adversely affected by the region’s recent economic slump, and widespread public disenchantment with corruption." 8



Political and social disturbances? Difficult economic, political and social climate? Profound inequality? Widespread disenchantment with corruption? It leaves one speechless.

So, in the case of Bolivia, we see the following in operation:


An IMF loan is made to Bolivia, with conditionalities


The World Bank steps in to enforce the conditionalities and impose structural adjustments


The World Bank loans "development" funds to Bolivia, and simultaneously brings in private bank consortiums to fund the various projects that Bechtel had in mind.


Bechtel makes a sole-source bid, and it is accepted.


The water project ends in total failure and Bechtel gets kicked out after extreme political pressure from consumers.


Bechtel files a "lost profit" claim according to a pre-negotiated "insurance guarantee" with the World Bank Group (MIGA, see above.)


If Bechtel wins its claim, it will be paid off with taxpayer money contributed by member countries.


Undoubtedly, any loans from private-sector banks that later turn sour, will be bailed-out with taxpayer funds as well.

This kind of operation is brazen stealing (albeit perhaps legally) of funds from everyone in sight: Bolivia, the city of Cochabamba, the people of Cochabamba, U.S. taxpayers.



The only beneficiaries are Bechtel, the commercial banks and a few corrupt politicians who got their customary bribes and kickbacks.

A penetrating question remains to be answered: When did Bechtel first set their sights on the Bolivia deal? Did Bechtel have a role in suggesting or creating the conditionalities and Structural Adjustments specified by the World Bank in the first place? If so, there would be grounds for criminal investigation.

It is not likely that the World Bank will tell us, because of its very secretive inner workings. Even Stiglitz has noted,

"The IMF and World Bank still have disclosure standards far weaker than those of governments in democracies like the United States, or Sweden or Canada. They attempt to hide critical reports; it is only their inability to prevent leaks that often forces the eventual disclosure

One such EMC contract with the IDF began in 2006, the year of Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon. [in which Hezbollah just threw the terrorist mercenaries out of Qaysar, Syria and was largely responsible for handing the IDF their asses in 2006; this is what technology does, it weakens soldiers in direct relation to the use of advanced technology; the IDF isn't nearly what it used to be] Israel’s Globes business paper said that this three-year, US$30-million contract was "the largest [data] storage systems contract in Israel." Then, in 2010, the IDF awarded a storage-system contract to EMC and its competitor-cum-partner, NetApp. (See NetApp in table "CPP Investments.") This five-year contract was worth between US$100-$120 million.

Manufactured Cyber-Attacks On Banks Validate One World Currency

To displace facts with credible fiction requires a period of “preparing the minds” [weaponizing terrorism] so that the mark will believe a pre-staged storyline. Thus the essential role of a complicit media to promote: (a) a plausible present danger (Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), (b) a plausible villain (a former ally rebranded as an Evil Doer)[Boston bomber brothers], and (c) a plausible post-Cold War threat to national security (The Clash of Civilizations and “Islamo-fascism”).

A programmed sequence connected to social engineering with a mathematical
predetermined outcome is all you are; a set value of predictable outcomes.

Welcome to the machine.

Edinburgh Airport installs biometric system to track passenger movements
MFlow Journey allows better queue management   
Edinburgh Airport has become the latest site to deploy Human Recognition Systems’ MFlow Journey queue measurement system to track and react to the movement of passengers through check-in, security and passport control.
Due to go live this month, the system is one of a new breed of passenger management technologies that allow airports to spot bottlenecks in real time, reducing queuing time during peak hours.

An anonymous facial image is taken of each passenger as they check in and the time it takes each to reach certain waypoints plotted over time. If this time breaches a pre-set parameter for enough passengers, alerts can be generated.
The principle is that moving passengers from check in to the terminal increases their satisfaction with that airport and boosts the amount of time they have to spend money in the retail outlets that generate profit for airports.
The system can also be used to track the movement of passengers through the airport as a whole.
“As the system doesn’t rely on people carrying Bluetooth or Wi-Fi technology, we are able to collate highly accurate data on the movement of passengers through security screening and then make informed decisions about how we manage this area of the airport in the long term,” said Edinburgh Airport’s IT head, Graeme Agnew.
MFlow is already in use at Global Infrastructure Partners’ other UK air terminals, Gatwick and London City Airport. The firm acquired Edinburgh Airport, which handles 13,000 passengers per day, in 2012.

“The aviation industry is continually looking at innovative ways to provide real-time insight into passengers’ journeys as they move through the airport – biometric technology is an effective and efficient way to provide this data,” commented Human Recognition Systems’ aviation business unit manager, Jim Slevin.
“Capable of being deployed as a complete end-to-end solution, from check in to departure, MFlow Journey is changing the way that airports manage operational challenges and measure passenger experience.” 
In a separate announcement earlier this month, Edinburgh Airport carrier EasyJet announced that it was trialling digital boarding passes issued on Apple and Android mobiles.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/singleton

“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control

CFR

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§ 72.11Meaning of terms.

As used in this part, unless the context otherwise requires, terms shall have the meanings ascribed in this section. Words in the plural form shall include the singular, and vice versa, and words importing the masculine gender shall include the feminine. The terms “includes” and “including” do not exclude things not enumerated which are in the same general class.

ATF Officer. An officer or employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) duly authorized to perform any function relating to the administration or enforcement of this part.
Appraised value. The value placed upon seized property or carriers by the appraiser or appraisers designated for the purpose of determining whether the property or carriers may be forfeited administratively.

Carrier. A vessel, vehicle, or aircraft seized under 49 U.S.C. Chapter 11 for having been used to transport, carry, or conceal a contraband firearm or contraband cigarettes. Vessels, vehicles, or aircraft seized under other provisions of applicable laws shall be considered personal property.

Commercial crimes. Any of the following types of crimes (Federal or State): Offenses against the revenue laws; burglary; counterfeiting; forgery; kidnapping; larceny; robbery; illegal sale or possession of deadly weapons; prostitution (including soliciting, procuring, pandering, white slaving, keeping house of ill fame, and like offenses); extortion; swindling and confidence games; and attempting to commit, conspiring to commit, or compounding any of the foregoing crimes. Addiction to narcotic drugs and use of marihuana will be treated as if such were commercial crime.

There are Over 50,000 SWAT Team Raids Annually in America

The Psychotic Militarization of Law Enforcement

What is all of this outrage really about? It has nothing to do with race. The only thing that makes sense to me, is that for whatever reason(s), the media moguls are in collusion with some sort of psychological/social engineering scheme to cause panic, fear, and most of all distraction from the real issues people should be concerned about.

Just like with the prior school shootings, we don't hear mention of them anymore. We will never hear the name George Zimmerman one year from now. It will be the next guy, or next operation.

Los Angeles' W Hotel confirms that claims of $15,000 in damages allegedly resulting from protests never happened - BY BRAD FRIEDMAN

Despite reporting to the contrary from both Los Angeles’ NBC affiliate and the Los Angeles Police Department, Trayvon Martin protesters in Hollywood on Sunday night neither “stormed” nor caused “about $15,000 worth of damage” at a local hotel.

For the most part, protests in the wake of the “not guilty” verdict for George Zimmerman in Florida, have been peaceful here in L.A., though, at times, it seems as if NBC’s local affiliate, NBC4 hoped they might not be.

The BRAD BLOG has confirmed with a spokesman at the W Hotel in Hollywood that “no protestors ever entered” the facility, even as NBC4′s NewsChopper4 reporter Megan Reyes told both the studio and viewers watching their live web stream of protests on Sunday night that protesters were “getting very rowdy” and had “broken glass” at the hotel. She cited no source for her reporting, and NBC4 did not respond to The BRAD BLOG’s request last night via Twitter for detailed on Reyes’ sourcing.

By Monday on NBC4, false reports of “broken glass” had turned into false reports of “$15,000 worth of damage” at the hotel, after reporter Tony Guinyard informed viewers that protesters “stormed” the hotel and, as as an LAPD Commander, on camera, confirmed that report.

All of that, however, was completely disputed by two W Hotel officials we contacted on Monday…

* * *
“In Hollywood, a large group [of protesters] stormed the W hotel,” Guinyard reported, before LAPD Commander Andrew Smith offered official confirmation.
“At one point,” Smith says in the report (see beginning at appx 1:10 in the video here), “a group broke of them broke off and went into the W Hotel, committed what I’m told is about $15,000 worth of damage. Spray-paint, graffiti, that type of thing, and then they left.”

“Those were some of the individuals we arrested later that were part of that group,” Smith continued. “We have a total of 5 people that were arrested in Hollywood for failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly. And now I’m getting reports that one more person was arrested for throwing bottles at our officers in Hollywood as well.”