As the credit crunch continues to leave Britain cash-strapped and high street banks report huge losses, Dispatches investigates who is responsible for the current crisis. Reckless lending and risky investments have been blamed for directly driving up mortgage rates and increasing the numbers of people losing their homes. Dispatches investigates how the bank chiefs allowed this to happen and if...
For the last two months , Occupy UC Davis has been blockading a campus branch of U.S. Bank. Now, in a victory for Occupy that potentially gives birth to a new movement tactic, U.S. Bank has capitulated and permanently closed the branch. U.S. Bank has been a visible symbol on campus of the corporatization and monied corruption of education in part because, as The Aggie campus newspaper...
Two summers ago, at the U.S. Social Forum, I attended a panel discussion about ways to expand the use of credit unions as alternatives to the “too big to fail” banks whose risky investments had helped tank the economy. Each of the speakers—people involved in credit union leadership or advocacy—expressed confusion and frustration that they hadn’t already seen a...
Help limit the influence of big corporate banks and strike a blow for the working man by moving your funds to a credit union. 1. Fuck Convenience (And Your Money is Federally-Insured) The subversion used by the big banks is “convenience.” How it makes cattle of us all. It’s the same predilection
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS, a few friends were having dinner wondering what personal actions they could take to help limit the power of the big banks and create a more sane, stable financial system. How, they wondered, could they help end the era of Too Big To Fail? The financier at the table recommended that everyone could move their money out of the Wall Street banks and into community banks...
Interest charges are a strongly regressive tax that the poor pay to the rich. A public banking system could realize savings up to 40 percent - allowing taxes to be cut, services increased and market stability created - with banks feeding the economy rather than feeding off it. In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35...
Banks make so much money because they can create money, effectively out of nothing, by lending. Every single pound in your bank account was created by a bank, not by your government. Visit www.PositiveMoney.org.uk , find out more and SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN. ...and spread the word!
A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks. Announcing its successful hack on a Twitter account , the group declared, "We will fire at anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks." Earlier in the day, Swiss bank PostFinance issued a statement announcing that...
Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive and disputed areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the...
Episode 1: Winner Take All Politics Bill Moyers explores how America's vast inequality didn't just happen, it's been politically engineered. Episode 2: Crony Capitalism Bill Moyers and former White House budget director David Stockman on the all-too-cozy relationship between Washington and Wall Street. Episode 3: How Big Banks are Rewriting the Rules of Our Economy Big...
There's been a very strange episode being written about the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on. The story, first reported by The Tech Herald , has been been written about in numerous places (see Marcy Wheeler , Forbes ,
I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of. The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the...
The Daily Show - I Give Up - Pay Anything... Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog ,
October 15, 2011 customers at the Citibank branch at 555 La Guardia Place in New York were locked inside the bank and then 23 of them were subsequently arrested for trespassing after trying to close down their bank accounts. At least one of the people was not an Occupy protestor, but a regular customer who was completely caught of guard by her arrest.
Outraged that their local bank is fueling climate change through the support of coal burning power plants, a group of polar bears take matters into their own hands by organizing a protest and withdrawing all of their money from the bank.
How important is this issue worldwide? Having private banks create money is the root cause of all world poverty, hunger, disease and misery. And until we fix it, we will never be able to make a dent in these other issues. We can fix this. We can fix it in a matter of months -- a year at most. We can make our government the most financially sound in the world -- nearly overnight. The...
In historic breakthrough, Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren offers bill to force the Federal Reserve to finance student loans at 0.75% with no cost to taxpayers; measure embodies principles needed for US economic recovery from current depression. I urge a major all points mobilization in support of Sen Elizabeth Warren's Bank on Students bill mandating that the Federal Reserve provide...
Dan Mathews reveals common misconception in how we deal with banks. Watch and laugh as Dan catches our politicians off guard with some simple questions. These questions are simple, but you'd be surprised who actually has trouble answering. This 2009 entertaining documentary film explores the history of banking, the selling out of the prosperity of Canada, the clearance sale of Canadian...
More than a year has gone by since Congress passed the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. The Federal Reserve has committed trillions of additional dollars in virtually zero-interest loans and other assistance to large financial institutions resulting in the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. President Bush and Ben Bernanke told us we needed to bail out Wall Street...
In Iceland, the first European country to wake up to an economic crash, people became aware that they could and should intervene in society and started demanding more democratic participation. The payment of bank debts by citizens went to referendum. The government was forced to create a Council to write a new constitution: a citizens' group - without politicians, lawyers or university...
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix C onspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic...
Over the first half of 2012, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been demonstrating its commitment to support the scaling up of renewable energy in Africa with the approval of US $800 million in loans to spur private investment in Morocco’s growing wind and solar markets. The Bank’s technical and financial support of Morocco’s plan to develop a concentrated solar power...
Occupy Wall Street Time Sq. May 15, 2012 is a video of a rally and march to protest the banks, corporate thieves,criminal wars, and a worthless government.
The US’ housing bubble burst nearly six years ago, but the worst may be yet to come. After a landmark settlement, the major banks have lifted a freeze on foreclosures and government relief has been too small to make a difference. Public housing budgets have been slashed, leaving larger numbers of people with no place to call home. The line between home ownership and homelessness is...
John Pilger travels to many third world countries to investigate the devastating results of loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). This film shows how many wars today are not carried out at the barrel of a gun, but by the monetary policies of global banking institutions. Instead of bombs, it has been discovered that debt is a far more powerful weapon to control and...
CONFIDENCE GAME examines the demise of the investment bank known as Bear Stearns; the first Wall Street domino to fall in America's, and the world's most dire economic crisis since the Great Depression. Though the firm collapsed in the space of five short days, CONFIDENCE GAME reveals that the bank's downfall was many years in the making due to a confluence of fraud...
Have you ever wondered why there’s so much debt? Or why the experts and authorities seem completely unable to solve the current debt crisis? Well the reason they can’t solve it is because they’re trying to fix and repair the existing banking system. But the existing banking system is completely flawed. It’s the existing system that has buried all of us under a...
In order to examine the true effects of globalization, renowned journalist John Pilger turns the spotlight on Indonesia, a country described by the World Bank as a model pupil until its globalized economy collapsed in 1998. The film examines the use of sweatshop factories by famous brand names, and asks some penetrating questions. Who are the real beneficiaries of the globalized economy? Who...
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI , the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters...
A new initiative is re-energising the Occupy movement. Called the Rolling Jubilee , it is a plan to use money from donations to buy distressed consumer debt from lenders at a marked down price, just as debt collection agencies normally would. But instead of hounding debtors for payments, it will simply cancel the debts. The hope is that the liberated debtors will themselves contribute to...
News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning , widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued , the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quick
My response to this editorial , not published by the University Daily Kansan: " For someone who emphasizes the importance of education, Billy McCroy seriously needs to do his homework. In portraying the Occupy Movement participants as nothing more than uninformed whiners that are jealous of others, and in his defense of corporate banks, financial institutions, and the Federal...
The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies. The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is not nearly limited to: Shutting down Wikileaks servers, starting with the Amazon server
The occupy movement continues to grow city-by-city, town by town right across Turtle Island (North America) and right across the planet. People are occupying parks and squares, banks, and businesses, now we must truly embrace the slogan ‘occupy everywhere.’ OCCUPY SQUADS ‘Occupy Squads’ are groups of people willing and committed to responding to examples of...
Campaign video by Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy, about the Robin Hood Tax, a tiny tax on bank transactions that could raise hundreds of billions for public services and to tackle poverty and climate change at home and around the world. Add your own voice to the campaign at http://www.robinhoodtax.org.uk
You won't believe the lies and misinformation Fox News is spreading about global warming and climate change. No responsible company claiming to support the environment should be advertising with a corporation that consistently deceives America about the climate crisis. Rupert Murdoch says he wants to "get their house in order." Let's help him along by applying pressure to his bank accounts...
Anna Baltzer, a Jewish American, gives her eyewitness perspectives on average citizens living in occupied Palestine. Baltzer spent 5 months in the West Bank working with the International Women's Peace Service. Her presentation highlights how the Israeli government's policies have drastically and negatively affected normal Palestinian life, and how this perspective has been omitted from most...
Attack ads may be bad news for our democracy -- but Big Media companies are laughing all the way to the bank, raking in $3 billion in political ads this season.
The following ideas were generated by the more than 85 people who participated in the World Cafe discussion that was part of the Economics of Happiness Summit + Launch of the Common Wealth Time Bank on September 3rd, 2012. We hope they will inspire and challenge you to make at least some of these changes in your own life and in your wider community.
For young Americans, the U.S. recession is a major bummer on our bank accounts and future. Where can we look to for advice? Enter Argentina, a country that went through its own economic crisis in 2001, and where we might be able to learn a thing or two -- even if it is 5,000 miles away from Wall Street.
Parodying the BBC's SpringWatch, wildlife presenter Bill Oddie investigates the banker species, venturing into the den of banking giant HSBC to expose the £100 million it provides in loans and services to some of the most destructive logging companies in the world, often in violation of its own policies.
"Too big to fail" is bigger than ever, megabanks still have major scandals, and the derivatives market is still volatile. To change the system, we can switch where we bank. http://www.SwitchYourBank.org
A feature length, not for for profit documentary that looks into the world of banking and fiat currency using scenes from various movies and media sources from across the galaxy. It is made to analyse the actions taken by government and the people in the midst of the financial crises. This feature length documentary is made by Dejavusion Productions and Lucas Media using a variety of sources...
Tuesday, 20th November 1900 GMT European Parliament votes to protect WikiLeaks. In a landmark decision today the European Parliament initiated the drafting of legislation that would stop the arbitrary banking blockades against WikiLeaks and other organizations facing economic censorship. This is an important signal from the European lawmakers.
At a time when many are disillusioned with big banks and big business, and growing inequity in our country, employee ownership offers a real solution for workers and communities. Shift Change is a new documentary that highlights worker-owned enterprises in North America and in Mondragon, Spain. The film couldn’t be more timely, as 2012 has been declared by the U.N. as the...
At a time when many are disillusioned with big banks and big business, the economic crisis and growing inequality in our country, employee ownership offers a real solution for workers and communities. Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work is a new documentary (released in fall 2012) that highlights worker-owned enterprises in North America and in Mondragon, Spain. Part 2 is a video...
A bold new threat to the economic status quo brings on a press blackout. Social pain, anger at ecological degradation and the inability of traditional politics to address deep economic failings has fueled an extraordinary amount of practical on-the-ground institutional experimentation and innovation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders in communities around the...
The American Ruling Class is one of the most unusual films to be made in America in recent years -- both in terms of form and content. The form is a "dramatic-documentary-musical" and the content is our country's most taboo topic: class, power and privilege in our nominally democratic republic. At bottom the film is a morality tale, the story of two Yale students (played by Harvard men)...
97% owned present serious research and verifiable evidence on our economic and financial system. This is the first documentary to tackle this issue from a UK-perspective and explains the inner workings of Central Banks and the Money creation process. When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it's essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked...
Zeitgeist: Addendum, a 2008 documentary film produced by Peter Joseph, is a continuation of the film Zeitgeist, the Movie. The film includes facts regarding the Federal Reserve System in the United States, the CIA, Corporate America and others, concluding the advocation of a libertarian movement called the Venus Project, created by social engineer Jacque Fresco. The movie was released free...