Justice Network - Occupy Wall Street

NY Fed Fired Examiner Who Took on Goldman
by Jake Bernstein
ProPublica, Oct. 10, 2013

A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post.

In the spring of 2012, a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York determined that Goldman Sachs had a problem.

Under a Fed mandate, the investment banking behemoth was expected to have a company-wide policy to address conflicts of interest in how its phalanxes of dealmakers handled clients. Although Goldman had a patchwork of policies, the examiner concluded that they fell short of the Fed’s requirements.

That finding by the examiner, Carmen Segarra, potentially had serious implications for Goldman, which was already under fire for advising clients on both sides of several multibillion-dollar deals and allegedly putting the bank’s own interests above those of its customers. It could have led to closer scrutiny of Goldman by regulators or changes to its business practices.

Before she could formalize her findings, Segarra said, the senior New York Fed official who oversees Goldman pressured her to change them. When she refused, Segarra said she was called to a meeting where her bosses told her they no longer trusted her judgment. Her phone was confiscated, and security officers marched her out of the Fed’s fortress-like building in lower Manhattan, just 7 months after being hired.

"They wanted me to falsify my findings," Segarra said in a recent interview, "and when I wouldn’t, they fired me." read more

So Who is Carmen Segarra? A Fed Whistleblower Q&A

by Jake Bernstein
ProPublica, Oct. 28, 2013

Former bank examiner Carmen Segarra vaulted into public consciousness earlier this month when she filed a wrongful termination lawsuit alleging that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York fired her after she refused to go soft on investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs.

As ProPublica has reported, the Fed hired Segarra in late 2011 as part of a group of examiners brought on to monitor systemically important banks in the aftermath of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul. The Fed wanted experts in key areas — such as operations, compliance and credit risk — to examine the "Too Big To Fail" financial institutions.

Segarra's career path seemed to make her a perfect fit. Segarra, 41, was born in Indiana, raised mostly in Puerto Rico and graduated from Harvard. Her father, a doctor, encouraged a life-long love of learning. She is a polyglot, fluent in Spanish and French, conversant in German and Italian. Even in the midst of preparing her lawsuit, she continued with classes in Dutch, which she says is "totally messing up my German."

After getting a master's degree in French cultural studies at Columbia's campus in Paris, she went on to law school at Cornell. She then spent 13 years working at different financial firms, including Citigroup and Société Générale. Outside of the office, she held leadership positions in the Hispanic National Bar Association. Hired by the Fed as a legal and compliance specialist, she was told to pay particular attention to how Goldman was complying with the Fed's requirements on conflicts of interest. read more

Phila Police Capt Ray Lewis (Ret) joins OWS, Arrested

OCCUPY! - OWS Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Together

Occupy.com

OCCUPY! - OWS Occupy Wall Street

Brian Tracy: This is long overdue, throughout history the bankers have expanded credit and the money supply, encouraged construction and improvements and then contracted the supply of money to effectively confiscate all that was created during the expansion years. The federal reserve system has been quietly asset stripping the middle class out of existence since the 1970's with inflationary policies ... When are the payments by insurance (AIG) and payments by others going to be applied to balances?

Alrady Regnah: I think people today are too afraid to protest as "normal" you are looked at as an idiot if you stand up for what is true and good. With 10 million foreclosures coming down the pike and houses sitting for YEARS, one wonders how long it will take for a REAL protest to occur. Love Rachel's report and how she touched on the foreclosure MILL - T his is a MUST SEE MEDIA report. Touching on what REALLY happened in the depression is important -two thumbs up!

Matthew Weidner: I am currently prosecuting a half dozen cases where the banks have kicked down doors, changed locks and in some cases stolen property....including one case that has been pending in federal district court for more than a year. In several of my cases, the homeowner IS NOT EVEN IN FORECLOSURE. The banks have taken the position that they can kick down any door anytime they want....and courts and law enforcement are supporting this position.

FBI Investigated 'Occupy' As Possible 'Terrorism' Threat, Internal Documents Show
Huffington Post
by Alice Hines
December 23, 2012

According to internal documents newly released by the FBI, the agency spearheaded a nationwide law enforcement effort to investigate and monitor the Occupy Wall Street movement. In certain documents, divisions of the FBI refer to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a "criminal activity" or even "domestic terrorism."

The internal papers were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice fund via a Freedom of Information Act Request. The fund, a legal nonprofit that focuses on civil rights, says it believes the 112 pages of documents, available for public viewing on its website, are only "the tip of the iceberg."

"This production ... is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement," wrote Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the fund's executive director, in a press release Saturday. Read more

Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
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Shani Smith of SOUL Speaks at Protest outside of White House & AG - Big Bank negotiations

No Sweetheart Deal for Wall Street!

We Shall Not Be Moved

Report: Debtor Prisons on the Rise

New reports by the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice have found a sharp rise in debtor prisons across the country. Poor defendants are being jailed for failing to pay legal debts. In Ohio, a man named Howard Webb, who earns $7 an hour as a dishwasher, has served two stints in jail totaling over 300 days for being unable to pay nearly $3,000 in fines and costs from various criminal and traffic cases. In Michigan, a twenty-five-year-old single mother named Kawana Young has been jailed five times for being unable to afford to pay a few minor traffic tickets. Eric Balaban of the ACLU said, "Incarcerating people simply because they cannot afford to pay their legal debts is not only unconstitutional but also has a devastating impact upon men and women, whose only crime is that they are poor."

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, ideals, thoughts, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

Hypocrisy Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Pepper-Spray Brutality at UC Davis
The Atlantic
by James Fallows
November 19, 2011

Selected passages

This Occupy moment is not going to end any time soon. That is not just because of the underlying 99%-1% tensions but also because of police response of this sort -- and because there have been so many similar videos coming from cities across the country.

I can't see any legitimate basis for police action like what is shown here. Watch that first minute and think how we'd react if we saw it coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria. The calm of the officer who walks up and in a leisurely way pepper-sprays unarmed and passive people right in the face? We'd think: this is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population. Read more

NYT: Officers Put on Leave After Pepper Spraying Protesters

"We are Confused" Oakland Police Officer's Association Open Letter to the Citizens of Oakland

Zero Hedge
by 4closureFraud
November 1, 2011

An Open Letter to the Citizens of Oakland from the Oakland Police Officer’s Association

1 November 2011 – Oakland, Ca.

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused. Read more

The Case information was moved to the Banking page, thanks.

Pro se credit card case, Neil J. Gillespie v. HSBC Bank, et al, no. 5:05-cv-362-Oc-WTH-GRJ, US District Court, M.D. Fla., Ocala Division

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The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra - This American Life

An unprecedented look inside one of the most powerful, secretive institutions in the country. The NY Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor big banks. But when Carmen Segarra was hired, what she witnessed inside the Fed was so alarming that she got a tiny recorder and started secretly taping.

Prologue

Ira introduces Carmen Segarra, a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve in New York who, in 2012, started secretly recording as she and her colleagues went about regulating one of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. This was during a time when the New York Fed was trying to become a stronger regulator, so that it wouldn't fail to miss another financial crisis like it did with the meltdown in 2008. As part of that effort to reform, the Fed had commissioned a highly confidential report, written by Columbia professor David Beim, that identified why the regulator failed in the years leading up to the crisis. Beim laid out specific recommendations for how the Fed could fix its problems. Carmen's recordings allow us to see if the Fed successfully heeded those recommendations more than two years later. What we hear is not reassuring.

Act One

ProPublica's Jake Bernstein tells the story of Carmen's first months at the New York Fed, and how she came to start recording. And we hear the story of how the Fed examiners respond to an unusual, questionable deal that Goldman Sachs did — a deal that the top Fed guy stationed inside Goldman calls "legal but shady."

Act Two

We hear what the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs say about all this. We hear a New York Fed supervisor tell Carmen Segarra how an examiner should talk and act to be successful at the Fed. And we hear what happens to Carmen when she does exactly what David Beim's confidential report told the Fed it needed to encourage its examiners to do in order to spot the next financial crisis.

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Credit Suisse inquiry will keep files secret for 50 years | Reuters

John Revill (Sat, July 15, 2023 at 10:34 AM EDT)

~ ~ ~Isabelle Chassot from the centrist Mitte party and newly designated chair of a Swiss Parliament special commission that will look into the collapse of Swiss bank Credit Suisse and its sale to UBS by Swiss authorities, poses in Bern, Switzerland, June 15, 2023~ ~ ~

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ZURICH, July 15 (Reuters) - A parliamentary investigation into the collapse of Credit Suisse will keep its files closed for 50 years, according to a parliamentary committee document, a level of secrecy that has triggered concern among Swiss historians.

The document means the investigating commission would hand over its files to the Swiss Federal Archives after a longer gap than the usual 30 years to ensure high levels of confidentiality apply to the investigation, which has generated huge public interest.

The investigation will focus on the activities of the Swiss government, financial regulator and central bank in the run up to the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS in March.

The investigation is only the fifth of its kind in the country's modern history and the committee of lawmakers conducting it has sweeping powers to call on the Swiss cabinet, finance ministry and other state bodies.

"After the completion of the investigation, the files shall be handed over to the Federal Archives and shall be subject to an extended protection period of 50 years," the committee said in a strategy paper outlining its communication policy.

The Swiss parliament declined to comment on Saturday after the 50-year requirement was first reported by newspaper Aargauer Zeitung.

The Swiss Society for History raised concerns about the length of time, with its president Sacha Zala writing to commission head, Isabelle Chassot, a law-maker from the Swiss upper house of parliament.

"Should researchers want to scientifically investigate the 2023 banking crisis, access to the CS files would be invaluable," Zala wrote, according to the newspaper.

"Ideally, it should be possible to secure and make accessible the archive after an appropriate protection period has expired and, if necessary, subject to historical research conditions," he added.

The committee held its first regular meeting in Bern on Thursday, where it stressed the confidentiality of its proceedings, which could include interviews with bankers.

"All persons participating in the meetings and the questioning are subject to the duty of secrecy, not only the members of the commission, but also the interviewees themselves," it said.

"Indiscretions complicate the work or damage the credibility of the commission and can have negative consequences for the Swiss financial centre," the committee added.

Reporting by John Revill; editing by David Evans and Christina Fincher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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