Francois Hollande, Socialist President of France: My real enemy has no name, no face, no party. He’ll never run as president so he’ll never be elected, though he does govern. My real enemy is THE WORLD OF FINANCE.
Let this LOAD and then start listening at 14:00
My job is done:
Newsweek/Daily Beast
May 6, 2012 1:38 PM EDT
Despite his populist posturing, the president has failed to pin a single top finance exec on criminal charges since the economic collapse.
Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy here. This is the text of Podcast 89, my first UnPodcast. Making audio podcasts has been a labor of love for over 6 years and the love is gone, and the labor is going into other creative projects. Plus only a couple guys even email me or send money any more. So you must be bored with them too.
However, sometimes important things come up and I will write them down and post them here, just like a regular blog.
I can already tell it’s gonna be much messier and less refined that a spoken podcast. Sorry. It’s all I have time for.
…………
I just learned the frightening truth about our pathetic slick-ass conman sell-out president. According to economist Michael Hudson, as soon as Obama gets re-elected he is going to dismantle Social Security. Only a Democrat can do that. Republicans would be crucified if they tried it, just like George W Bush was. But, just as he believed the generals about the wars – not the diplomats, not the Vietnam vets, not even the soldiers fighting it – but the generals who get promotions ONLY when there are wars – so, when it comes to the economy, he believes the old school, trickle-down, Milton Friedman, neoliberal, free market economists. After 40 years of constant failure starting with Richard Nixon these trickle down guys are still doing things the Chicago School way, and Obama, who knows nothing of economics, is just following along. What a jackass. Who ever said this guy was smart?
Here is a president who has taken a stand on gay marriage, but refused to take a stand on the health insurance public option. Indeed, he stonewalled it to death, having made a backroom deal with the insurance companies. Here is a president who just said: “corporations are not people”, but he does not have the balls to make Eric Holder and his Justice Department prosecute the fraudsters on Wall Street: Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, John Corzine. These guys have stolen billions of dollars from the economy via lying and fraud and they are still walking around like princes.
“Corporations are not people.” I love it. Except that’s a Supreme Court issue and as president he will never have to deal with it directly. The same way gay marriage is a state issue and he will never have to deal with it directly. But on the things he DOES have to deal with what do we get? Knee-jerk conservatism, trickle down economics and kissing the ass of Wall Street.
It’s the same old Clintonista Liberal crap of being progressive on social issues, like gay marriage and women’s rights, but remaining shamefully conservative on economic issues. Like free trade, and hands off Wall Street.
Obama does not have the balls to stop the Afghan War. After ten years fighting over there he just had to fly into Kabul at night so Air Force One wouldn’t be shot down. And he wants us to think he has it almost wrapped up over there? What a transparent liar. What a gullible fool. Romney is a criminal and everyone who worked for Bain Capital should be put in jail, but at least he gave Massachusetts universal health care. Obama couldn’t even pull that off. 10 million Americans will still go without healthcare because Obama wanted a mandate and not guaranteed health care for all. More on that coming up.
Obama has no progressive action credential whatsoever – just talk talk talk talk talk. He doesn’t have a goddam thing to offer the Left but gay marriage. ABC news announced he favors gay marriage, because his daughters Sasha and Malia, who haven’t even hit puberty yet, convinced him gay marriage is cool.
So when he got into office he was taking advice from Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, and now he’s taking advice from Sasha and Malia.
………..
As I’ve said in earlier podcasts, marriage is a religious institution. Government should have NO say in it. It is a violation of the separation of church and state for government to meddle with marriage and every one of the founding fathers would be appalled to see that marriage has been absorbed into government. Get married in church get divorced in church. But no, government couldn’t leave it alone. Government invented no fault divorce and overnight created a 65% divorce rate. And now with gay marriage they are making a mockery of thousands of years of religious tradition. There may be some 2000-year-old religion that allows gay marriage, but I don’t know of it. So first the government usurps marriage from the church, then creates no fault divorce, and now it says gays can get married. What the fuck is this? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it’s really just a turtle with feathers. Continue reading
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #88
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NOW DC, the National Occupation of Washington DC, has been pretty much a flop. The reason, say the organizers, is that Occupiers around the country have dug in on local issues and don’t have the time to come to Washington. This is exactly what I have been ranting about for the past six months. Diversion into local issues dilutes and dissipates the strength of Occupy. Occupy is not a recruitment tool for anti-war activism, anti-GMOs, the foreclosure crisis, Hawaiian Sovereignty, or any other noteworthy cause. It is a worldwide uprising against the bankster terrorism and corporate colonialism that lie at the root of virtually every economic problem we have. Last September was the first time in 63 years that I saw people around the globe unite against our main systemic problem: we have to change the way banks and corporations are allowed to operate if we want to get our livelihoods back. But by shunting us off into local issues, important as they may seem to be, they have divided and conquered us. Again! Fuck.
There has been a call for a General Strike On May 1 of students and workers. Read this from OWS NYC. And Occupy May Day General Strike. I’ve been waiting 60 years for this.
Also a coalition of leftist organizations are training 100,000 direct action demonstrators, in 15 different cities across the USA, for the upcoming summer fun. For info: the99spring.com
It’s officially official. Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis has just pulled the pants off how the military and Obama have been lying to us about “progress in Afghanistan”. Read about it in the New York Times here and Rolling Stone here. He names names and kicks ass. It’s Vietnam all over again, just like I said ten years ago! Same fear-mongering, same soldiers dying for nothing, same lies and same sleazy cover-ups.
Occupy Wall Street — the Oil Painting — by Rich Zubaty — 40″ x 50″
I just stumbled on this. Wow! Matt Taibbi says what we all know but have trouble articulating. We want to change the WHOLE FUCKING THING.
They printed my Jail the Bankers comment in the New York Times. OWS is given credit for prodding Obama to investigate and prosecute Wall Street crime.
The Rude Guy is the poison mushroom on the pizza of corporate culture. The arrow in the ass of the institutions of our time.
And you have stumbled upon the blog page that posts his podcasts, and the text versions of his podcasts, every month or so.
There’re plenty of laughs, and something to offend everybody.
Podcast 88: The American Spring … March 15, 2012
Podcast 87: Financial Gangsters … February 15, 2012
Podcast 86: Cure Financial Cancer … January 17, 2012
Podcast 85: Jail the Bankers … November 15, 2011
Podcast 84: How to Wreck the Banks … October 18, 2011
[The Rude Guy Podcast #88 the American Spring March 15, 2012]
Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy here. Happy to announce that we have arrived at the American Spring.
The National Occupation of Washington, DC begins March 30. The link to find out more is:
nowdc.org nowdc.org
Also…On May 1 there has been a call for a General Strike of students and workers. For info go to Facebook and search: Occupy May Day General Strike : Occupy May Day General Strike and Read this from OWS NYC.
Also a coalition of leftist organizations are training 100,000 direct action demonstrators, in 15 different cities across the USA, for the upcoming summer fun. For info:
the99spring.com the99spring.com
I have a valued listener who makes regular donations to this show. He lost his professional job and has been working as a security guard, and I really respect him for making donations to The Rude Guy on a security guard’s take-home pay. But…I was dismayed to hear that he, a part-African American, supports Ron Paul. At least when he’s not supporting Rocky Anderson. I’m surprised that anybody who listens to this show would support Ron Paul.
Yeah, I love Ron Paul’s anti-war, anti-Federal Reserve positions. But his deregulate-everything mentality, and cut corporate taxes to 5%, is not going to give us national health care, and is not going to rein in the big banks that have cooked up $700 trillion dollars in derivatives, that are about to blow up. I don’t think Ron Paul knows what the fuck a derivative is. I think he’s a doddering old fool offering up simplistic solutions that are being swallowed whole by hurt, gullible people, looking for easy answers. And the people listening to this show are NOT supposed to be gullible! And are NOT supposed to be settling for easy answers. Or why the fuck am I doing this!
I WOULD be a Libertarian myself if they had some program for regulating corporations…especially the banks. How could I expect anti-government crusader Ron Paul to rein in the banks that are robbing us blind? What’s he gonna do it with? Noble intentions? That’s a job for federal cops.
Yes, ending the Fed would be a tremendous thing to do. I’m all for it. We would have to start a National Bank of the United States to begin “printing” our money again, without creating debt that sticks us with interest payments (just like Abe Lincoln did to win the Civil War when European Banks wouldn’t lend us any money.)
And while we’re at it. Let’s make sure we understand how the bank bailout has screwed all of us. The Fed prints money wildly so the bank speculators can stay in business gaming the price of food and oil…and buying U.S. government bonds so the Federal Government can spend money like water on war and bogus Homeland Security contractors. That’s why Washington won’t bust Wall Street fraud. Because Wall Street buys their fucking bonds! But… at the same time…our wages do not go up at anywhere near the same rate as the inflation these guys are creating by printing so much money. We are all being screwed, so that Wall Street can keep buying government bonds, with money they conjure up on computer keyboards. It’s an abomination against poor and working people, because government auditors do not even take food, oil and housing, into account, in their so-called inflation index.
Comes now Bernie Sanders:
Senator Bernie Sanders and 69 other members of Congress say federal regulators should curb the speculation in crude oil markets which has artificially pushed up gasoline prices to nearly $4 a gallon. The lawmakers – 23 senators and 47 members of the House – said Monday, in a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that the regulators must stop Wall Street futures traders from dominating the oil market. The commission has flouted a provision in the 2010 Wall Street reform law that required regulators to put tough new trading limits in place by Jan. 17, 2011. quote: “We are disappointed that, more than a year later, the commission has not fulfilled this important regulatory duty…It is one of your primary duties – indeed, perhaps your most important duty – to ensure that the prices Americans pay for gasoline and heating oil are fair, and that the markets … operate free from fraud, abuse, and manipulation,” the lawmakers wrote.
They stressed that gasoline pump prices are up, despite high supplies and low demand. According to the Energy Information Administration, the supply of oil and gasoline is greater today, than it was three years ago, when the national average price for a gallon of gasoline was just $1.90. Today, the national average is more than $3.70 a gallon at a time when the demand for oil in the U.S. is at its lowest level, since April of 1997.
There is a growing consensus that speculators are to blame. Exxon Mobil, the Saudi Arabian government, the American Trucking Association, Delta Airlines, the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, all say excessive oil speculation significantly increases oil and gasoline prices. Citing a recent report from the investment bank Goldman Sachs, a Feb. 27, 2012, article in Forbes said, excessive oil speculation adds $.56 to the price of a gallon of gas.
Quote “As the cost for American people to fill their gas tanks continues to skyrocket, the CFTC continues to drag its feet, on imposing strict speculation limits, to eliminate, prevent, or diminish excessive oil speculation,” the members of Congress told the commissioners.
“We urge you to take immediate action to impose strong and meaningful position limits, and to utilize all authorities available to you to make sure that the price of oil and gasoline, reflects the fundamentals of supply and demand.”
In a surprising development ABC News is all over the story too. Hail Occupy Wall Street. The news media is getting its balls back.
On Feb 23, 2012 ABC New’s Mark Greenblatt Reports:
Every time you fill up your car with gas, your dollar ends up in the hands of a wide range of interests from around the world. Some of your money goes to oil companies, some goes to refineries, and some to the gas stations you stop at. What may surprise you, however, is what one of Wall Street’s top regulators has to say about who else you’re paying: speculators on Wall Street.
Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates commodity futures and option trading in the United States, said it’s time to look at home — in addition to overseas — when searching for the reasons why gas prices are on the rise.
By Chilton’s calculation, if you drive a car like a Honda Civic, you’re paying $7.30 more than you should, every time you fill up — to Wall Street speculators. If your car is a Ford Explorer, you’re paying an extra $10.41. For a Ford F150, owners pay an additional $14.56 per fill up -or more than $750 a year. Are you getting this? That’s $750 a year that goes from some Nebraska farmer or rancher, to Goldman Sachs! For nothing! For gaming the price of oil.
Bernie Sanders says that he wants to limit the amount of oil an investment company like Goldman Sachs can buy. Some call that socialism. I say good! And so would Benjamin Franklin.
In the last podcast I talked about how Ben Franklin expounded the “labor theory of value” – that labor IS capital – which he wrote about, 130 years before Karl Marx.
Ben Franklin was a socialist. Continue reading
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #87
or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device
Or CLICK HERE to read the TEXT version of The Rude Guy Podcast #87
[The Rude Guy Podcast #87 Financial Gangsters February 15, 2012]
[MLK clip]
My hero. Martin Luther King Junior…Rich Zubaty here. Here’s some good news.
The New York and Los Angeles City Councils have passed resolutions stating unequivocally that: corporations are not people, and money is not speech. Yahoo.
Also Missoula Montana, Boulder Colorado and Madison, Wisconsin all passed direct-ballot voter-initiatives by over 75% of the voters, that corporations are not people, and money is not speech. Hallelujah!
Also…State Representatives Mark Pocan and Chris Taylor of Madison Wisconsin introduced a resolution to pass an amendment to the United States Constitution that corporations are not people and money is not speech. If Congress fails to act, the resolution further calls for a National Constitutional Convention under Article V of the United States Constitution.
Also signature drives have commenced to get the…“corporations are not people, money is not speech”…resolution, on the ballots, in November, in Oregon, Illinois, California and Utah.
Thank you Occupy Wall Street. Let’s not stop now.
[RG voice ] Thank you Occupy Wall Street
[bird]
Here’s the inside dope on the mortgage mess, and the lawbreaking bankers who created it. I put it in story form so it’s easier to understand.
OK… Let’s say it’s 2001, you’ve got a steady job, you own a house, and want to build-on an addition for your teenage kids and your old mom. You go to a bank and ask to borrow $50,000.
The banker says, what the hell, you’ve got a good job. Why not borrow $250,000, put that together with the equity you already have in your house, and buy yourself a new house. Don’t worry. We can keep the monthly payments low. In six years you’ll have a balloon payment, but the price of your house will have risen so much by then, we can just refinance it to pay off the balloon.
“OK,” sez you. And you buy a new house.
The banker takes your mortgage and bundles it together with hundreds of other mortgages and sends them all offshore to a shell company – a dummy company – in the Cayman Islands, which is actually owned by Deutsche Bank. The dummy company turns the mortgages into securities – stocks – and then issues the stocks back to your bank.
What has your bank done?
Listen closely. Your bank is required by the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, to maintain a 9 to 1, debt to assets ratio. 9 to 1, debt to deposits. That means that for every 1 dollar it has on deposit, it can loan out nine. Not ten, not eleven, nine.
However, by shipping its loans offshore and securitizing them, and taking back stock on those securities, it now holds stock, which is an asset, not a loan. So it can turn around and issue hundreds more mortgages based upon the legal limit of the 9 – 1 debt to asset ratio. In other words it’s a flat out scam to get around SEC regulations, and the SEC has been asleep at the switch and probably being paid off to look the other way. Continue reading
