What the hell is the government doing wasting $1.45tn on a pile of junk - the new F-35 plane?

The government plan to spend $12.6bn ever year from now until 2037 on buying new F-35 planes.
The F-35 is markedly INFERIOR to the existing F-22 Raptor and is plagued by problems.
Even John McCain has called the F-35 a total waste of taxpayer money. Why hasn't Obama stopped it?

The $12.6bn a year the government is planning to continue to waste on the F-35 plane.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/11/us-lockheed-fighter-report-idUSBRE92A13R20130311

Winslow Wheeler, at the US Center for Defense Information described the F-35 programme as a “gigantic performance disappointment”, which was not even as stealthy as the F-22 Raptor.

He added: “It’s the counterintuitive problem of paying a huge amount of money thinking you’re getting a Lamborghini or Ferrari: You’re not, you’re getting a Yugo (the cheap, mass-produced cars made in the former Yugoslavia).” 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9813125/Lightning-will-ground-F35-fighter-jet-known-as-the-Lightning-II.html

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Why the economy of Bush/Cheney failed and why Obama is on EXACTLY the same path

The economy of Bush/Cheney failed because :- 

It was built on vaporware - a massive increase in the money supply which went into financial speculation not the real economy. It greatly exacerbated the housing bubble and subsequent size of the crash. 

Massive reckless spending - most of it on the military and "national security" - i.e. spying on it's own people. 

Bush lowered taxes on the very rich quite a lot, but relatively not on the middle class or the poor very much. 

Bush/Cheney have the worst record for job creation since the Great Depression in the 1930's (see 2).  

Over Bush/Cheney's term (January 2001 to December 2008) only 1 million jobs were created, but there were 2 million MORE non productive government jobs. 

If we take account of the fall out from the failed Bush/Cheney years and the housing market crash (as we should) - Bush/Cheney LOST 2 million jobs Jan 2001 to Dec 2009 and LOST 4 million private sector jobs. 

Total real wages under Bush Cheney saw a MASSIVE decline. 

As did real disposable incomes. 

The only reason the economy stayed afloat as long as it did, was because of large scale equity withdrawals from the housing bubble, which made the subsequent bursting even worse.

The housing bubble was greatly exacerbated by massive Federal Reserve pumping and loose monetary policy. 

The Bush/Cheney economy was built purely on an increase in DEBT. 

Bush/Cheney didn't create ANY jobs - in fact they LOST 4 million private sector jobs. 

Bush/Cheney, with the active connivance of the Federal Reserve private bank, was a total disaster for the American economy and America in general.

Under Obama :- 

The Federal Reserve has just increased the amount that it is printing from $500bn to $1tn a year.
This too is vaporware and is not going into the real economy (just like Bush/Cheney).
This too is being used for financial speculation - the big banks are hoarding it (they already have $2tn of excess reserves)  and speculating with it, which is pushing up the stock market and the prices of basic commodities like food and gas (see 4).
This money printing by the Federal Reserve is actively harming the economy by LOWERING the disposable incomes of ordinary people, which in turn lowers GDP growth and will cause higher levels of unemployment in the future.  

The Fiscal Cliff deal just actively harmed the economy by handing out a massive $200bn tax hike on the middle class and below, thus lowering disposable incomes by the same amount.

There is still massive reckless spending and massive amounts of government waste.
Obama started out spending much more than Bush/Cheney because of the bail outs and the"shovel ready" job "creation" projects that weren't shovel ready and didn't create ANY jobs.

Obama is now spending about $100bn a year less than Bush did in 2007 - wow - sic!
Corporate Welfare has now reached over $1.3tn a year - ALL of which was retained in the Fiscal Cliff deal and ALL of it at OBAMA's insistence (not the GOP who would of cut a trivial $10bn or so).
N.B. Obama chose to bail out the big banks at 100c on the dollar in the AIG bail out. AIG could only afford to pay out 5c on the dollar or less.)

The CBO are projecting a deficit for 2013 of just under $900bn.
But they will turn out to be higher because of the economic slowdown in 2013.

There are still 3 million less jobs in the American economy than there were at the end of 2007.
Even worse than this, we are seeing a continuation of the trend under Bush where well paid full time jobs are swapped for lower paid, part time and minimum wage jobs.
Deficits are higher under Obama than for Bush in 2007, because tax revenues are lower - there are fewer well paying jobs.

TOTAL WAGES are still massively declining under Barack Obama and the situation is about to get a lot worse.  

Taking the February jobs report, total wages declined by about $3.5bn just in February - an annualized rate of $42bn which is strongly recessionary.
459,000 mostly low paid part time jobs were created in February.
289,000 much better paid full time jobs were lost in February. See 5.

On top of the decline in Total Wages, we have higher rates of inflation in basic necessities like food and gas. Average gas prices at the pump just hit an all time record for February and there are reports of $4 gas in California.

Walmart's sales for February onwards were reported as "dire" by one of their senior managers as a result of the combination of all the above factors.

Personal incomes fell by a massive $505bn in January and personal expenditures rose by $18bn in January. See 6.  
While the fall in personal incomes will have been exaggerated by the last minute political shenanigans over the Fiscal Cliff deal in early January, January's figures still point to what is going to become a substantial downward trend.

Under Obama Total Wages and disposable incomes are falling dramatically at an even steeper rate than they did under Bush/Cheney. 

We are about to see the introduction of Obamacare which will be a massive drag on the US economy. (see 7)
It is the equivalent of a 3.8% tax hike on the middle class. But costs are forever increasing so it will no doubt turn out to be more.

The cost of Healthcare is also about to skyrocket (the IRS are predicting that basic minimum Healthcare insurance will cost $20,000 in 2016).
The Healthcare lobby have just announced that it will rise even more - they full intend to pass on IRS fees on to the consumer.

We are already starting to see some of the adverse effects of the introduction of Obamacare.
Businesses have already started raising their prices to cover their expected increases in costs.
Obamacare will raise the price of just about everything and increase overall cpi fairly significantly.

Obamacare will MASSIVELY LOWER the disposable incomes of ordinary people (that is available to spend on everything else except Healthcare). Thus deepening the coming recession.      

Obama is continuing the massive reckless spending of the Bush/Cheney regime.
Principally by :-
Keeping ALL of the over $1.3tn of Corporate Welfare.
A massive INCREASE in military spending compared to Bush/Cheney. $1,219bn was spent on  the military and "civil defense" in 2012. Military spending is projected to rise by a further over $100bn a year by 2020.

Obama is actually exacerbating the policy of Bush/Cheney in the balance of favoring the very rich over the 99% in tax policy.
All of the tax avoidance schemes of the very rich have been retained by Obama (people like Mitt Romney will still be paying their 15% in taxes while a middle earner will still be taxed at 28% on taxable income above $35,000 of taxable income).
(Obama has stated that he has raised taxes by $67bn a year on the rich - but almost all of that money will come from people earning between $250,000 and $1million a year - i.e. the wealthy NOT the VERY wealthy.)

Meanwhile the middle class and below just got a massive $200bn a year tax hike with the expiry of the payroll tax break and the expiry of some other middle class allowances.) See 8.


The modern equivalent of the Bush era's housing equity withdrawals is just starting.
People have started raiding their pension funds and 401k's.
As with Bush/Cheney it will make the coming problems much worse in a few years.


With current government and Federal Reserve policy, America will go over the REAL fiscal cliff in the next few years and suffer a FAR larger financial crash than 2008. 
People have called the Bush/Cheney inspired financial crash of 2008, financial armageddon.
But this next one is going to be 20 or 30 times worse.
The amount of debt involved is 20 or 30 times more than the housing and property market bubble.

Government spending is projected to rise from $3.6tn in 2012 to $6tn in 2023.
Federal deficits will be over $3tn a year in 2023.
The National debt will rise to over $40tn by 2023.
See 9.

This is the REAL Fiscal cliff. 

At some point in time the market will wake up to the fact that the Federal government will NEVER be able to repay it's debts (just like Greece can't).
At this point in time interest rates will rise rapidly to 5% and beyond (they are currently 2%).
The costs of servicing the interest payments will rapidly increase. The government just won't be able to afford to pay the interest (just like Greece couldn't).

At this point in time the rest of the world will lose confidence in the dollar (China, Russia, India, Brazil and Japan already have.) See 10.
The dollar will plunge in value by 50%+ within a short space of time.
The price of imports will double almost overnight.
The current annual trade deficit of $500bn+ will have to adjust to zero almost overnight.
Wages will be held down - there will be even more of an over supply of labor, than there currently is, when all this goes down.

Comparing Greece to America


Greece
Greece has even more in common with America than you might think.

It was reported in 2006 that Greece is sitting on $1tn worth of natural resources (a lot of it offshore oil and gas).
The Greek National Debt debt is currently just over $200bn.
The Greek Natural Resource value to National debt ratio is currently about 5:1.
(But it will take a lot of money to get those resources out of the ground, so the real ratio is probably closer to 1:1.)

At some point in time the Greek currency will have to be devalued by 50%+.
And they will have to be refinanced somehow (but not within the Euro - that makes no difference to the long term problems of Greece whatsoever).

At some point in time either :

The Greeks will have to do a deal with an outside party to pay off their debt in return for the rights to their large amount of natural resources. China is the obvious candidate for this. See 12.

Or the Greek debt will just have to be written off in it's entirety.
In both cases Greece will have to leave the Euro for any solution to be possible.

N.B. The reports of Greece having a debt problem didn't start surfacing in the mainstream or markets until 2009, when Greece had a reported debt to GDP ratio of 160%.
The interest rate on Greek sovereign debt went from 2% to 7% within a few weeks.

In actuality Greece had hidden over 100bn euro's away in off balance sheet accounting trickery so the real debt to GDP ratio was about 240%.
(The 100bn+ euro's of off balance sheet debt has now been officially by the Greek government.
100bn+ of debt was written off in a deal with creditors in 2012.)

America

America's Natural Resources have recently been valued at $248tn.
(The Chinese have recently done their own surveys but it is not known what number they arrived at.)

By 2023 America's Debt to GDP ratio will be about 250%.
(This does not include the much higher numbers for future unfunded liabilities for pensions and Healthcare. See 11)

Or almost exactly the same as the true Greek debt position in 2009.

The National Debt will be $40tn+
The value of america's Natural Resources (in the ground) will be 5 or 6 times it's National Debt.

Or almost exactly the same as Greece.

China is looking to get a fire sale deal on large chunks of American Natural Resources in the medium term. Who else will have $40tn+ just laying around?  

There will be an increase in tensions and conflict and perhaps an outright hot war with China going forward.
We have already seen the start of this in Syria and now Mali.

At least Bush/Cheney didn't start WW3 - they just started the wreckage of America's economy and relative global power.

With the current policies of Obama, the wrecking of America's economy and it's decline in relative power is accelerating and there is a distinct possibility of WW3 in say 20 years time.

A race for natural resources in Africa has happened before - about 20 years before the start of WW1. See 13

Appendices 

Bush/Cheney spending 2007 

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/FY-2007-Federal-Budget.htm 

(1) Total Employment 2000 to 2012 

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/ 

(2) US Employment 1939 to 2008 

http://pw1.netcom.com/~rdavis2/employ08.html 

(3) The total money supply almost doubled under Bush/Cheney (until the housing market crash started)
It increased from around $38tn to $68tn in just 7 years.
The total money supply is equivalent to the total amount of debt.
(Under a fiat monetary system, the only way that the money supply increases is by an increase in debt.)

(4) Why the current massive Federal Reserve printing is pushing up the price of food and gas, thus LOWERING disposable increases and LOWERING GDP growth

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-2tn-of-excess-bank-reserves-is.html

(5) The February jobs report explained and why they confirm recession in 2013, despite the positive media headlines
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/february-jobs-reports-explained-and-why.html

(6) Personal incomes fell by $505bn and expenditures rose by $18bn in January.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1241691-incomes-fall-505-5-billion-expenses-rise-can-you-say-stagflation

(7) Obamacare and why it's such a terrible policy for America.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-affordable-care-act-should-be.html

(8) The Fiscal Cliff deal - a financial analysis. The government's sell out to large Corporations and rich elites. Tax hikes on the rich are a myth.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/fiscal-cliff-deal-obamas-corporate-sell.html

(9) CBO spending forecasts through to 2023 and future GDP growth, Federal deficit and National Debt forecasts.
The National Debt will be over $40tn by 2023.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/cbo-projections-of-future-gdp-growth.html

(10) The coming of the real fiscal cliff
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/greek-scenario-and-us.html

(11) America's unfunded future liabilities

Estimates for America's future unfunded liabilities for pensions and Healthcare range from $84tn to over $200tn.

There is a future Demographic time bomb heading America's way (and most other places too).
It has just started hitting in a trivial way, but it will exponentially increase in magnitude from about 2020 on.
The ratio of the number of pensioners to the number of workers will rapidly increase.
People are living longer.
This ratio is projected to double and go from 0.2 in 2008 to 0.4 by 2050. See chart below.

But these future liabilities are greatly subject to any future changes in government policy - e.g. to raise the official retirement age to 70+.
The Social Security Trust Fund is reported to currently have $2tn in it.
But this is $2tn worth of Treasuries not hard assets.
Treasuries that are going to plunge in value by over 50% when the interest rates move to 5%+.

Things like raising the contribution limit from the first $102,000 of income to a higher amount, as Dems like to call for as a solution, would not change the dynamics one iota. There are not enough people that earn over $102,000 to make a difference.
Improving the efficiency of American Healthcare could significantly reduce the cost of Medicare/Medicaid, e.g. by significantly reducing the price paid for drugs, cutting fraud. Obamacare goes in completely the opposite direction though and makes Healthcare even less efficient.

(12) My suggested solutions to Greece's problems
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/if-i-were-greece.html

(13) The mistakes of history are oft repeated. The collapse of the American, British, Russian and Roman Empires
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-mistakes-of-history-are-oft.html

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The current college education policy needs to be COMPLETELY reversed Updated 06/05

The current policy of making people go to college and rack up $10,000's of debts to obtain increasingly worthless degrees should be reversed. 

It is DRAMATICALLY increasing the cost of college education.

If there is more demand for something, prices ALWAYS increase. 

If something is more prevalent, like the number of people with degrees, the value ALWAYS goes down. 

One of the items that has increased in price the most over the last decade, is the price of college education. It is increasing in price by about 10% a year.

The ONLY beneficiaries of current policy are the colleges. 

Maybe you should look at the campaign donations to Obama from large colleges. They want the current system to be enhanced and extended. 

It is in the interests of ALL Americans (except those running the colleges) that current policy be reversed. 

Most jobs, except things like the sciences, engineering and doctors, don't need a college degree. 

It would be much better if we returned to the old system, where most people received on the job training, while earning a basic wage - not racking up student debts.   

About 40% of current college entrants don't even graduate.
They still get landed with the student debt that they have incurred. 

The default rate on student loans has recently started increasing dramatically. 

The total amount of student loans has just gone past $1tn.
It is now larger than the sub prime mortgage scandal.

Nearly half of all college graduates don't end up in a job that requires a college degree.
Over one third of college graduates now end up in a job that does not even require a High School diploma.

Update 04/01
284,000 graduates last year, ended up in a job paying minimum wage.
They are still saddled with $10,000's of student loan debt.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/college-graduates-minimum-wage-jobs_n_2989540.html

Under half the people that currently enter college, get any benefit from starting a college course. 
OVER HALF the people that currently enter college DO NOT get any benefit from a college education. They just get saddled with $10k's of student debt. 
If you take into account the drop out rates, about 36% of current college entrants end up in a job that needs a college degree. 
Those who do get a benefit from a college education are paying a much higher price for their college degree than they should be and a much higher price than they used to pay in the past. 
This doesn't affect the wealthy very much - if you have $10m in the bank paying another $50k for college education isn't an issue. 
Paying $50k or so more than people should be paying for a college degree is only an issue for the 99%.

53% of recent graduates are jobless or underemployed. 
Youth unemployment has got worse since this article was written a year ago. 

N.B. This article does not take into account the drop out rate, which is now 40%. 
How many of those people are now unemployed or in very low paying jobs?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/53-of-recent-college-grads-are-jobless-or-underemployed-how/256237/

Update 06/05 
The student loan debt crisis in 9 charts
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/student-loan-debt-charts

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February jobs reports explained and why they confirm recession in 2013, despite the positive media headlines

Bad news on the jobs front again in February. 
Total wages continue their relentless decline. 
Increasingly people are having to do 2 or 3 poorly paid part time jobs to make ends meet, because well paying jobs just aren't out there. 

Those who track the quality composition of the jobs, as opposed to just the quantity, will know that the part and full-time jobs breakdown has long been a major issue. 

The number of people now doing part time work rose by a massive 459,000 from January to February. 
This is a combination of factors : -
Some of the unemployed have settled for part time work, because they could not find full time employment.
Full time workers have been put on short working time because demand isn't there to employ them full time.
Employers are increasingly using part time (and temporary) labor to avoid paying additional benefits.

The total number of full time + part time jobs increased by circa 170,000 NOT the media headline of 236,000 (see Appendix 3).  

From this we can surmise that the number of full time jobs DECLINED by around 289,000 from January to February. 

Total wages MASSIVELY declined between January and February and is strongly recessionary.

A back of the envelope calculation for total wages from the available data says that annual TOTAL WAGES declined by circa $3.5bn in February alone (on supposedly very good jobs numbers). 
This is an annualized rate of $42bn a year. 
See Appendix 2. 

But things are set to get much worse than this. 
Disposable incomes, even for those still in well paid employment, are declining very significantly.
See Appendix 4

Looking behind the data in the February job number headlines, the ONLY conclusion one can reach is that the US economy is SLOWING DOWN and entering a recession. 


The solutions to start fixing America's economic problems are obvious.

Cut Corporate Welfare by $1.3tn+ a year and give huge tax breaks to middle earners and below to INCREASE disposable incomes and INCREASE job growth.

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/cbo-projections-of-future-gdp-growth.html

NEITHER party is even contemplating these measures. 
They would somewhat harm the profits of their large Corporate sponsors. 

But just as in 1914 when Henry Ford doubled the wages of his workers overnight in very similar economic conditions to today - the disposable incomes of his workers DRAMATICALLY improved and pretty soon so did Henry Ford's profits.  



Appendices 

(1) The actual BLS employment reports 

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

The more interesting full details of the Household survey
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm


(2) Assumptions used in the back of the envelope calculations for Total Wages

The average part time job gained was 25 hours per week at close to minimum wages (I have been generous and assumed $10 an hour here).
Total wage increase $12,500 per job X 459,000 new jobs = $5,737 million

The average full time job lost paid median wages of $32,000 (again this is being generous as the full time jobs being lost are more likely to have been paying higher than median wages than below - as per the current trend over the last few years).
Total wage decrease $32,000 X 289,000 jobs lost = $9,248 million 

The net annual decrease in February was circa $3.5bn ($9.2bn minus $5.7bn). 
If February was repeated for the next year total wages would decline by $42bn. 


(3) The disparity between the business establishment and the household surveys explained

The business establishment survey reported a 236,000 increase in the number of jobs. 
The household survey only reported a 170,000 increase. 

Most of the difference of 66,000 can be explained thus :- 

(3.1) January business survey
The January business survey was adjusted downwards by 38,000 (157,000 to 119,000). 
February's numbers were pumped up by the same amount.

(The Business Establishment survey for previous months is almost ALWAYS adjusted downwards so that double counting of some new job creation can be applied for the media headlines.) 

(3.2) The BLS Birth Death Model 
Magically 11,000 more jobs were created in February 2013 than February 2012 by the Birth Death model. 
We would expect a decline in the number of jobs for new/expired businesses in February 2013 compared to 2012 due to a slowing economy. 

1st Quarter 2012  GDP growth was 2.2%. 
4th Quarter 2012 GDP growth was reported as 0.1% (an exaggerated decline mostly due to a difference in timing of defense contracts - much higher than average in Q3 2012 and much lower than average in Q4 2012). 

Taking the average of 3rd and 4th Qtrs to take the defense spending timing anomalies out gives a GDP growth of 1% for the 2nd half of 2012. 

1st Qtr GDP growth was 2.2%, 2nd Qtr was 1.3%. We have a well established trend of a SLOWING economy. 

Without anything else we might expect 1st Qtr 2013 GDP growth to be eventually reported as somewhere around 0.5%. I.E. 1.7% LOWER than 1st Qtr 2012. 

We should expect 1st Qtr GDP growth to be reported in the 0.0% to 0.5% range - taking into account other things.


(4) The decline in disposable incomes

We HAVE got other economic factors that we already know about.
And they are all BAD for the economy. 
The Fiscal Cliff handed out a huge $200bn annual tax hike to the middle class and below in early January.
We are seeing very high rates of inflation in things like food & gas (almost entirely due to the Federal Reserve's policy of increasing the rate of Fed pumping from $540bn a year prior to November to $1tn now). 
True inflation is now around 9%. 
(This is cpi as measured by the model in place in 1980, without government fiddles since then, to reduce the headline rate of inflation to the official current circa 2%.)  

Disposable incomes for those keeping an "inflation adjusted" job or on fixed incomes/benefits (seniors etc.) have GREATLY DECLINED since the start of 2013. 

There is a lot of scaremongering of the trivial amount of money in the sequester by the politicians and the media. 
The politicians have set about applying the sequester in the worst possible way by maximising job losses and furloughs where ever they can. This is to garner a public outcry against the sequester so that eventually almost no cuts to future planned increases are made. 

Much more importantly, the sequester scaremongering, is to divert public attention from the $1.3tn+ of annual Corporate Welfare that could be easily cut. 

New businesses will be less likely to be started up in the current economic climate and old businesses more likely to be wound up. 
We would expect a pretty significant DECREASE for jobs in the Birth/Death model for February 2013 compared to February 2012, not the reported 11,000 increase. 

N.B. The Birth/Death model statistics are notoriously unreliable and wildly over stated as the economy goes into recessionary conditions (as I believe we are now are).    

(5) The recession of 2013

The recession of 2013 will be caused by 3 main factors :- 

Current government economic policy which is lowering disposable incomes and decreasing job growth

Current Federal Reserve policy of massive monetary pumping. This is also actively LOWERING future GDP growth NOT increasing it, by lowering disposable incomes of 99% of the population. 
See :- http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-2tn-of-excess-bank-reserves-is.html

Europe's deepening recession due to their massive debts.

At some point in the near future, Europe's debt problems will blow up again (absolutely nothing has been to fix them since they first started being reported in 2009). 
I am expecting the reporting of French big banks being in trouble, i.e. insolvent, as the next major piece of news out of Europe at some point this year. 

(6) Other bad signs for the future in the job number statistics 

The most surprising development in February from a quality standpoint was that the number of multiple job-holders rose by a massive 340K, which is a record. 

Increasingly more people are having to hold down 2 or 3 poorly paid part time jobs to make ends meet. 

Increasingly the over 54's are having to remain in at least part time employment to make ends meet.
Increasingly the over 65's are having to do a part time job, because their pensions are not sufficient to maintain a liveable income. 

Both of these are taking away employment prospects from the young. 
The teenage unemployment rate ROSE by 1.7% in February. 

Since the start of 2009 4 million over 54's are now in employment. 
Since the start of 2009 1 million FEWER under 55's are now in employment. 

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Censored by Huffington Post. Hand out 30 year jail terms to criminal bank execs. Re: Elizabeth Warren statements

This comment was almost immediately removed by Huffington Post

"Hand out long jail sentences for criminal bank execs - 30 years plus. 

Stop pussy footing around the banks and applying zero penalties to the execs. 

It is well past time to start getting TOUGH with the banks. 

Holder recently re-iterated that he wouldn't prosecute the senior bankers whatever white collar crimes they choose to commit. 

If you do not impose the Rule of Law with deterrent penalties for bad and criminal behavior the only certainty is that you will get MORE criminal behavior. 

Holder just handed the big banks carte blanche.

The HSBC share price went up significantly after the government's "settlement" for their money laundering was announced. 
Even the market thought that Obama and Holder would impose far stiffer penalties than a trivial slap on the wrist shareholder fine. 

See how much and how quickly Wall St is cleaned up if the CEO's think their necks are on the line for a 30+ year jail term."

In response to this article about Elizabth Warren saying get tough with the banksters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/elizabeth-warren-hsbc-money-laundering_n_2830166.html

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Before 911 only the following countries did not have a Rothschild controlled Central Bank

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Comment censored by Huffington Post. The big banks have been acting like terrorists for YEARS

The big banks have been behaving like terrorists for YEARS. 

The only difference between Islamic Extremist terrorists and the big banks is that the big banks do thousands of times more damage to ordinary Americans and America than a bunch of muslim nutters ever will. 

STOP the big banks holding the country to RANSOM. 

Reinstate Glass Steagal IMMEDIATELY. 
Breakup the big banks and slim them down. 
Then SHUT THEM DOWN. 

Let the multitude of better managed smaller banks take up the slack of general loans. 

STOP the MASSIVE government subsidies to the big banks. 
It is government discrimination against the multitude of MUCH BETTER managed smaller banks. 

If you do not impose deterrent penalties on criminal activity on criminal behavior you will get MORE criminal activity. 

Reimpose the Rule of Law on the big banks and SHUT THEM DOWN.

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