@gulfgal98

I am serious about this. Where does the money paid in fines go?

What I am getting at is that all the fines in the world do nothing to help the people damaged by these criminal enterprises that we call "banks."

@gulfgal98

I am serious about this.

Q: Is there a case to be made for bringing back public executions?

A: Yes, but I think it would be a mistake to get into killing people.
Better to sentence these swine to life at hard labor. Televise them working all day every day.

Now that's entertainment.

plus Bernie goes off script. (courtesy RT)

https://www.rt.com/usa/428556-bernie-sanders-disney-abc-iger/

I am serious about this. Where does the money paid in fines go?

What I am getting at is that all the fines in the world do nothing to help the people damaged by these criminal enterprises that we call "banks."

@gjohnsit ...but the UN is little more than a tool for the American Empire to keep its client states in line.

Speaking of GDP, how much of the US GDP is wages? I doubt it's very much at all given how bad wealth disparity and social mobility are at the moment.

It's correct but it ignores a long-term trend

Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities.

“This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,” Alston told the Guardian.

Millions of Americans already struggling to make ends meet faced “ruination”, he warned. “If food stamps and access to Medicaid are removed, and housing subsidies cut, then the effect on people living on the margins will be drastic.”

Asked to define “ruination”, Alston said: “Severe deprivation of food and almost no access to healthcare.”
...
As one of the world’s wealthiest societies, the US is what Alston calls a “land of stark contrasts”. It is home to one in four of the world’s 2,208 billionaires.

At the other end of the spectrum, 40 million Americans live in poverty. More than five million eke out an existence amid the kind of absolute deprivation normally associated with the developing world.

the cruel math

The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measures reports that within the country, 40 million people — more than one in every eight Americans — live in poverty. Almost half of them are categorized as indefinitely in “deep poverty,” living with less than $2 a day.

Put that together with the fact that in the U.S., about 2.6 million people die every year — and most of those deaths are associated with poverty.

That changes U.S. politics. Research has shown that the haves have different political positions from the have-nots. By living longer and healthier lives, the haves have more opportunity to influence the politicians who craft the policies and programs that distribute public goods and services.

Meanwhile, because low socioeconomic status leads people to be sicker and to die earlier, poor Americans have far less chance of shaping political life — or of pursuing the policies that would help improve their health and lengthen their lives, such as improvements in health care, education, child care, neighborhood safety, nutrition, working conditions and so forth.

@thanatokephaloides Sorry, every time I hear that name, this song runs through my head. Feel free to ignore this...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyaK3jo4Sl4]

..... never spake truer .....

True then,
[video:https://youtu.be/bMehSfTmnbY]

and still true 20+ years later!
[video:https://youtu.be/ndODHKL1LEA]

@MrWebster getting richer and buying those with no morals off.

I believe those fines are also tax deductible.

Can any mafia match the wreckage that White American Banksters (WAB) inflicted on the world?

It is interesting if all this crap happened in some Central or Latin American country, Americans would just grouse about the low moral nature of Latin countries. Imagine HSBC. The country's lead prosecutor slaps a fine on bank money laundering for the violent vicious drug gang equaling one month of bank's earnings. Wanna bet charges of bribery would fly? And the lead prosecutor gets a job in a company run by corrupt bank officials. And the lower prosecutor letting HSBC off on criminal charges becomes the Boss. Oh and also, a guy becomes a Director of HSBC (Comey), later becomes the head of internal security for the entire country. Sounds to me like the drug cartels purchased themselves a government.

I still go back to Obama who praised several of these banksters who by the way needed bailout money. And then exactly a monthly later supports the mass firing of minority teachers. You know, they needed some accountability.

@snoopydawg Theme song for these Obama groupies:

Paul Street wrote Obama's presidency epithet

“Progressive” Obama: He’s Melting, He’s Melting

Priceless

Beneath progressive pretentions, Barack Obama the national political phenomenon has never been anything other than a tool of the United States’ corporate and financial ruling class. Obama rose to power in Washington with remarkable, record-setting financial backing from Wall Street and K Street election investors.

And answer to the lobbyist’s question came less the three years later: priceless. In his book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (2011), { link } the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind tells a remarkable story from March of 2009. Three months into Obama’s presidency, popular rage at Wall Street was intense and the leading financial institutions were weak and on the defensive. The nation’s financial elite had driven the nation and world’s economy into an epic meltdown in the period since Silverstein’s essay was published – and millions knew it. Having ridden into office partly on a wave of popular anger at the economic power elite’s staggering malfeasance, Obama called a meeting of the nation’s top thirteen financial executives at the White House. The banking titans came into the meeting full of dread only to leave pleased to learn that the new president was in their camp. For instead of standing up for those who had been harmed most by the crisis – workers, minorities, and the poor – Obama sided unequivocally with those who had caused the meltdown.

“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama said. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem. And I want to help…I’m not here to go after you. I’m protecting you…I’m going to shield you from congressional and public anger.” For the banking elite, who had destroyed untold millions of jobs, there was, as Suskind puts it, “Nothing to worry about. Whereas [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt had [during the Great Depression] pushed for tough, viciously opposed reforms of Wall Street and famously said ‘I welcome their hate,’ Obama was saying ‘How can I help?’” As one leading banker told Suskind, “The sense of everyone after the meeting was relief. The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability. At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.”

People love to say that Obama's presidency was the best one since FDR. These same people are making fun of Trump's voters because they can't see how he is hurting them economically. They also love to say that "Republican voters vote against their self interests."

The blindness is staggering!

@snoopydawg [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWEoJ65gPo]

Paul Street wrote Obama's presidency epithet

“Progressive” Obama: He’s Melting, He’s Melting

Priceless

Beneath progressive pretentions, Barack Obama the national political phenomenon has never been anything other than a tool of the United States’ corporate and financial ruling class. Obama rose to power in Washington with remarkable, record-setting financial backing from Wall Street and K Street election investors.

And answer to the lobbyist’s question came less the three years later: priceless. In his book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (2011), { link } the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind tells a remarkable story from March of 2009. Three months into Obama’s presidency, popular rage at Wall Street was intense and the leading financial institutions were weak and on the defensive. The nation’s financial elite had driven the nation and world’s economy into an epic meltdown in the period since Silverstein’s essay was published – and millions knew it. Having ridden into office partly on a wave of popular anger at the economic power elite’s staggering malfeasance, Obama called a meeting of the nation’s top thirteen financial executives at the White House. The banking titans came into the meeting full of dread only to leave pleased to learn that the new president was in their camp. For instead of standing up for those who had been harmed most by the crisis – workers, minorities, and the poor – Obama sided unequivocally with those who had caused the meltdown.

“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama said. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem. And I want to help…I’m not here to go after you. I’m protecting you…I’m going to shield you from congressional and public anger.” For the banking elite, who had destroyed untold millions of jobs, there was, as Suskind puts it, “Nothing to worry about. Whereas [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt had [during the Great Depression] pushed for tough, viciously opposed reforms of Wall Street and famously said ‘I welcome their hate,’ Obama was saying ‘How can I help?’” As one leading banker told Suskind, “The sense of everyone after the meeting was relief. The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability. At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.”

People love to say that Obama's presidency was the best one since FDR. These same people are making fun of Trump's voters because they can't see how he is hurting them economically. They also love to say that "Republican voters vote against their self interests."

The blindness is staggering!