AIG Executives Won't Face Criminal Charges

Federal prosecutors will not bring criminal charges against current and former American International Group Inc. executives for their role surrounding financial contracts that nearly brought down the insurer about two years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

The decision brings to a close a criminal investigation that, while mostly under wraps, was widely followed. The September 2008 bailout of AIG was one of the biggest and most shocking of the financial crisis, as trading by a noninsurance unit brought down one of the most iconic financial companies world-wide.'

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Yet Another Day of Iceland Banking Arrests

Ingolfur Helgason, the former Director of Kaupthing Iceland, and Steingrimur Karason, former CEO of the bank’s risk management department, were both arrested today upon arriving back in Iceland. They went straight to interrogation with the Special Prosecutor and are being held in police cells.'

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RBS to Pay £1.7 Billion in Bonuses despite £3.6 Billion Loss

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is 84 per cent owned by the British taxpayer, will pay out up to £1.7 billion in bonuses to its bankers after reporting a £3.6 billion pre-tax loss for the past financial year.

The loss for the 12 months to December 31 is less than the £5 billion expected and far below the £24.3 billion loss that RBS reported for 2008, a record for any British company.

However, the bank is facing criticism over its decision to reward investment bankers with bonuses worth £1.3 billion, or 27 per cent of its revenue, after receiving billions of pounds in taxpayers' money during the recession to save it from collapse. Other staff will share up to £400 million in bonuses.'

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Wall Street Whistleblower Proves That Money Never Sleeps

Banksters: U.S. Economy Hit by Perfect Storm

£10 Billion of Rip-off Overdraft Charges Won't be Refunded

Banks will be able to keep £10billion from rip-off overdraft charges after the Office of Fair Trading abandoned a legal challenge yesterday.
Millions of customers have been hit by the charges, with some forced to pay hundreds of pounds just for going a few pence into the red.
But the watchdog has decided it can no longer pursue its claim that the fees are unfair after a surprise Supreme Court ruling last month that sided with the banks.'

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You Have Got to be Kidding: Bernanke Named Time Magazine ' Person of the Year'

Just make sure you have your vomit bag handy!

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Outrage at Loans With Interest Rates of 2,000%

Greedy lenders are exploiting struggling families by offering Christmas loans with crippling annual interest rates of 2,350 per cent. Families hit by the credit crunch are turning to so-called payday loans because they cannot access extra money from high street banks.'

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Bankers 'Ducking and Diving' to Save Their Bonuses From the Windfall Tax

Bankers across the City are trying to change the terms of their pay deals to avoid Alistair Darling’s threatened bonus tax on their earnings.

Financiers are in frantic talks with their employers, having moved swiftly over the past few days to try to avoid punitive taxes on their bonuses.

The City is scared that Mr Darling will use today’s Pre-Budget Report to announce such a one-off levy. And high earners have rushed to make contingency plans with their employers, lawyers and accountants.'

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Government Backs Down on Veto of Banker Bonuses

A fresh row over City bonuses is set to engulf ministers after it emerged last night that 200 executives at Lloyds, the partly state-owned bank, are set to receive one-off payments worth up to 80 per cent of their annual salaries.

They will receive the money for integrating Lloyds with HBOS, which has led to more than 11,000 job losses at the combined bank since January.

It comes amid signs that the Government will not stop Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 70 per cent owned by the State, from paying massive bonuses to 20,000 investment bankers.

The Treasury had indicated earlier this week that it would veto a £1.5 billion payout to executives, a 50 per cent rise on last year.

But Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson stepped back from confrontation after the RBS board threatened to resign.'

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Fury as Credit Crunch Civil Servant Lands Top Rothschild Job

The civil servant who oversaw the taxpayers’ stake in Britain’s crisis-hit banks is at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row after it emerged he is to join a leading investment bank. John Kingman, the former chief executive of UK Financial Investments, is to become the new managing director of NM Rothschild.

The move is expected to be confirmed as early as this week, four months after he resigned from his £143,000 job controlling taxpayers’ stakes in the bailed-out banks. His appointment has been vetted by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, the body set up to ensure that senior civil servants and politicians do not unfairly cash in on their inside information when they step down to join the private sector.

It is expected that under the terms of the deal Mr Kingman will be prevented from working on Government contracts or working with the state-owned banks for at least a year. However, NM Rothschild is regarded as one of the favourites to take part in the sell-off of the Government’s stakes in Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland as well as Northern Rock, which is expected to begin inside the next two years.'

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Royal Bank of Scotland to Give Huge Bonuses

RBS Staff Lining up for their 2009 bonuses

THE state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland is planning to hand out record bonuses of up to £5m each in a snub to struggling taxpayers.

The average employee in its high-risk investment banking arm is likely to take home £240,000, with the top 20 staff in line for payments of between £1m and £5m.

The payouts by the investment banking division — from a total pay and bonus pot of £4 billion — would top the deals awarded at the peak of the financial boom in 2007 and are 66% higher than those paid last year.

RBS, then headed by Sir Fred Goodwin, had to be rescued from collapse by the Treasury last October with an initial injection of £20 billion. The taxpayer now has a 70% stake in the bank.

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Obama to Beef up Federal Reserve Supremacy

US President Barack Obama is to introduce plans meant to invigorate the central banking system due to 'very dangerous' conditions created in economy.

Following weeks of discussions between Washington legislators and American industrialists and bankers, the US administration has announced the formation of a new financial regulations bill drafted to renew the Federal Reserve's oversight of financial transactions nationwide.

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US Fed Chairman Demands Plan to Cut Social Programs

Testifying Wednesday before the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke demanded that Congress and the Obama administration map out a program of austerity measures to bring down record budget deficits. Bernanke made clear that the heart of this program should be sharp cuts in social spending, including basic entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“Maintaining the confidence of the financial markets,” Bernanke said in prepared remarks to the committee, “requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance.”

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Now the criminal fed has looted the country and put you the taxpayer in trillions of debt they want to stiff you even more!!!

Bailed out Bankers Hit The Pensions Jackpot

More than 20 former bank directors are benefiting from staggering retirement plans, with actual or potential pension pots worth a combined total of more than £111m. These are paying out yearly pensions of £6,430,000 between them.

The findings are part of a damning new exposé of some of Britain's top bankers to be broadcast on Channel 4's Dispatches programme tomorrow.

The select group of wealthy bankers will remain unaffected by the economic catastrophe facing millions of Britons. Many have already been able to give up work years ahead of state retirement age.

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Study Reveals True Extent of 'Old Boys Network' Between Government and Banks

LINKS between Government and the banking sector have been condemned in a new report that has uncovered the extent of the "old boys network" at the top of British public life.

Britain has a greater culture of cronyism than Europe or the US, according to the study, which identified key individuals who have moved jobs between politics, financial institutions and the bodies charged with regulating the banking industry

The report warns the close relations between business and politics "lead to a conflict of interest at best and a suspension of critical faculties at worst".

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Peru's Shining Example

Peru’s Supreme Court sentenced former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to twenty-five years in prison last week for creating death squads during his presidency – from 1990 to 2000 – which murdered dozens of people. More than seventy thousand people died during Fujimori’s reign in the war between his iron-fisted administration and Maoist guerilla groups, the “Shining Path,” and the “Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.”

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The Economic Crisis: No, This Will Not be a Normal Cyclical Recovery

When a nation consigns its people to working for meager wages, its prosperity is doomed. The Congress, at the behest of corporate lobbyists, wrote into legislation the rules that permitted companies to offshore jobs, reduce real wages, and permit risky financial practices. Therein lies the root cause of this crisis. People merely do what the law allows. Without a prosperous people, America cannot be a prosperous nation. So welcome America to the third-world.

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Protesters Storm Stage and Interrupt Larry Summers for Conflict of Interest Payments

Obama Holds 'Very Pleasant Meeting' With Top Bankers

US President Barack Obama met behind closed doors for more than an hour and a half with the chief executives of the largest American banks on Friday, reassuring the titans of finance that his administration has their best interests at heart.

According to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the meeting's agenda included the Obama administration's "toxic asset" purchase program, proposals for regulation of the finance industry, and executive compensation.

Every aspect of the administration's economic policy caters to the interests of the financial elite, of which the president is merely a mouthpiece.

The private meeting at the White House had the air of a conspiracy against the public, a gathering to discuss carving up state resources in order to hand them over to the banks and major investors.

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