Financial Meltdown

Financial_meltdown
  • Greece-riot-button

    "Real Despair" Sweeps Through Greece as Severe Austerity Measures Demanded by E.U.-IMF Cripple Nation

    February 14, 2012 | Story

    Greece continues to face political turmoil over a sovereign debt crisis that has embroiled the country for almost two years. On Monday, the Greek government said it would hold new elections in the face of massive demonstrations against a new austerity package that was approved on Sunday in exchange for a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout. Under the austerity deal, Greece will fire 15,000 public sector workers this year and 150,000 by 2015. The minimum wage will be reduced by 22 percent, and pension plans will be be cut. As lawmakers voted, 100,000 people protested outside the Parliament building in Athens. Some protesters engaged in rioting, looting and setting fire to dozens of stores and buildings. Some 160 people were detained, and dozens were treated for injuries. To discuss the latest in Greece, we’re joined by Maria Margaronis, London correspondent for The Nation magazine. She was in Greece last week covering the economic crisis there. Margaronis says Greece faces an "impossible choice" "either to default on its loans by March, when it owes a massive loan payment, or to accept this desperate austerity program, which will further sink the economy... The Greek people have really had enough of this. People are exhausted and desperate. On the street in Athens, there’s a sense of everything breaking down." [includes rush transcript]

  • Morgage-button

    50-State, $25B Mortgage Settlement: Relief for Struggling Homeowners or Bailout for Big Banks?

    February 10, 2012 | Story

    The U.S. Justice Department has unveiled a record mortgage settlement with the nation’s five largest banks to resolve claims over faulty foreclosures and mortgage practices that have indebted and displaced homeowners and sunk the nation’s economy. While the deal is being described as a $25 billion settlement, the banks will only have to pay out a total of $5 billion in cash between them. We speak to one of the settlement’s most prominent critics, Yves Smith, a longtime financial analyst who runs the popular finance website, "Naked Capitalism." "The settlement, on the surface, does look like it’s helping homeowners," Smith says. "But, in fact, the bigger part that most people don’t recognize is the way it actually helps the banks with mortgages on their own books... The real problem is that this deal is just not going to give that much relief." [includes rush transcript]

  • Foreclosedhome_showbutton

    Taxpayer-Funded Freddie Mac Caught Betting Billions Against Struggling American Homeowners

    January 31, 2012 | Story

    As homeowners across the nation struggle to keep up with mortgage payments—and in the worse cases face foreclosure—a new investigation reveals that taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, Freddie Mac, made multi-billion-dollar investments that profited if borrowers stayed stuck in high-interest mortgages. Freddie Mac began increasing these investments dramatically in late 2010, at the same time it was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such mortgages. Several U.S. lawmakers and prominent economists are now calling for Congress and the White House to end this financial conflict of interest. This comes just one week after President Obama promised "no more red tape" for homeowners looking to refinance. We speak with Jesse Eisinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning senior reporter at ProPublica, who co-authored the investigative report with NPR news. [includes rush transcript]

  • Santos_showbutton

    Ex-Marine Reoccupies His Own Foreclosed Home in Fight Against Freddie Mac, JPMorgan Chase

    January 31, 2012 | Story

    As Freddie Mac comes under scrutiny for betting billions on investments that profit if homeowners they issued loans to are locked into high-interest mortgages, we speak with Arturo de los Santos, a U.S. Marine veteran who was evicted last year in Riverside, California, after Freddie Mac and JPMorgan Chase foreclosed on his house last June. "We were trying to get the bank’s attention to review our case again. We couldn’t believe that after they had evicted us, they modified our loan," de los Santos says. "I called, and I told them, 'I thought we were doing the loan modification.' And they go, 'Well, we have a loan modification department and a foreclosure department, and the foreclosure department decided to sell the house.' So they sold the house." De los Santos and his family reoccupied their home in December with help from the Occupy movement, but face eviction again this week. [includes rush transcript]

  • Occupydc-button

    National Park Service Threatens to Evict Occupy D.C. Encampments at Two Parks Near White House

    January 30, 2012 | Story

    The National Park Service says it will begin enforcing a ban today on Occupy protesters camping overnight in McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, two parks near the White House where they have been living since October. Members of the Occupy encampment say they will resist eviction. "We are going to do our best to make sure that they’re protected from what is effectively a criminalization of poverty and a criminalization of homelessness. By choosing to evict the people who have no place else to sleep, they’re effectively criminalizing those among us who are disenfranchised," says Justin Jacoby Smith, a member of the Occupy D.C. media team, who joins us live from McPherson Square. [includes rush transcript]

  • Banking-button

    Despite Salary Caps, Treasury Approved Lucrative Exec Payouts at Dozens of Bailed-Out Firms

    January 27, 2012 | Story

    New York Daily News columnist and Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez reports the Treasury Department has approved payouts exceeding $5 million for 49 executives at firms that most benefited from the Wall Street bailout. The executives’ pay came despite the $500,000 salary cap established under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). [includes rush transcript]

  • "Obama’s Late Payment to Mortgage-Fraud Victims." By Amy Goodman

    January 26, 2012 | Blog Post

    Does Obama’s formation of the new task force aimed at investigating the shoddy mortgage-lending practices that contributed to the financial crisis signify a move to more progressive policies, as MoveOn suggests?

  • Nader_button

    "He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address

    January 25, 2012 | Story

    Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to live up to his record in office. "[Obama] says one thing and does another," Nader says. "Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail." On foreign policy, Nader says, "I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. [Obama] was very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms." [includes rush transcript]

  • Obama_sotu_button

    Fmr. Obama Adviser: Focus on U.S. Inequality in Election-Year SOTU Has Occupy Wall Street’s Imprint

    January 25, 2012 | Story

    In his last State of the Union speech before the November election, President Obama defended his record addressing the financial crisis and called for greater economic fairness. He warned that Wall Street would no longer be allowed to play by its own set of rules. But the bulk of the speech dealt with the economy. We get reaction from Jared Bernstein, former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and past member of President Obama’s economic team. Bernstein says that Occupy Wall Street "had a lot to do with" Obama’s message of economic fairness: "These issues, I mean, they’re called populist now. Frankly, I think they’re just basic fairness. I don’t know why it’s populist to argue that middle-class people should pay a fair tax rate and one that’s certainly no higher than that paid by millionaires and billionaires, or for that matter, that economic growth should not be a spectator sport for people in the middle class. [These ideas] haven’t broken through in the way that Occupy Wall Street did in a matter of months. So I give them a ton of credit." [includes rush transcript]

  • Button_taxguest

    As Romney Releases Tax Returns, Fmr Senate Investigator Says: We’ve Got to Start Taxing Corporations

    January 24, 2012 | Story

    During the GOP primary, Mitt Romney has come under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. We speak with Tax Justice Network USA chair Jack Blum, a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Blum appears in "We’re Not Broke," a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the United States and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. "Has [Romney] cheated? No," Blum says. "What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill... We must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that is the only way to balance the budget." [includes rush transcript]