Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

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Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:14 am

Me, here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=7922092

Interesting discussion.

(OP, lightly edited...)



How did the Wall Street banks buy up junk mortgages, package them into securities, and sell these to conservative investors, municipalities and pension funds around the world? The millennial fraud of the real estate bubble caused the financial crash and the new depression, but the bankers didn't care, because that was a condition of their plunder. The ones whose institutions failed still made awe-inspiring fortunes. The banks that survived - entirely thanks to a forced transfer of trillions of dollars of wealth from the people to their coffers - are now bigger and more powerful, and control a larger share of the financial market. From their perspective, the results so far are splendid. And very much as intended: the rich are richer, and fewer, and that is good.

This successful global confidence game would have been impossible without the "confidence," and that was provided by the ratings agencies. Their activity was at the heart of the fraud. They took payment from the banks who issued the securities, their clients. The auditors didn't bother to examine closely the securities - in many cases they could not have understood them if they tried - and dutifully placed the magic stamp on the upper “tranches”: an AAA rating.

Most institutional investors also did not understand these securities and normally would have considered them too risky to buy. They would have been scared off by a junk rating. But they bought the fraudulent MBS and CDO papers because of AAA ratings. They thought that meant a sure thing. They trusted the supposedly independent auditors.

Moody’s & Co. made the fraud possible on this scale. Without them, the securities-driven real estate bubble could never have got that big. The meltdown would not have been as dramatic. The depression might not be happening.

But the gangsters who came away with the epic booty would have had to make do with fewer billions in swag, and this was intolerable to them.

The major ratings agencies, like the Wall Street banks, are criminal organizations. Every time you hear someone from Moody's or Standard and Poor on the radio, you should know that a Tony Soprano would have greater legitimacy to speak, except a Tony Soprano would never be asked on the radio to talk about the state of “the economy,” or the need to cut social “entitlements.” He’d only be allowed to talk about his court cases.

Worse than merely criminal, these organizations have been rewarded for crime. They have prospered. They fear no punishment. Everything tells them that crime pays. They have been given every incentive to continue helping their clients steal anything that isn't bolted to a rock. And the rock, too.

Worst of all, these criminal organizations are committed by faith and by corporate charter to the doctrine of class war as practiced by the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind," as ADAM SMITH himself called profiteers in The Wealth of Nations.

They should have been shut down and their records should have been seized for a wide-ranging criminal investigation. That is what happened with Arthur Andersen when Enron met its revelation.

Instead, the killers have been re-armed and let loose to kill again.

And now the financial terrorists are plotting ever more ambitious attacks on the civilized world:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/busin ... ng.html?hp

Credit Agency Warns U.S. and Others of Risk to Top Rating
By DAVID JOLLY
Published: March 15, 2010

PARIS — Major Western economies have moved “substantially” closer to losing their top-notch credit ratings, with the United States and Britain under the most pressure, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday in a reminder that the global debt crisis is not limited to the small or weak. The ratings of the Aaa governments — which also include Germany, France, Spain and the Nordic countries — are currently “stable,” Moody’s analysts wrote in the report. But, it added, “their ‘distance-to-downgrade’ has in all cases substantially diminished.”

“Growth alone will not resolve an increasingly complicated debt equation,” Moody’s said. “Preserving debt affordability” — the ratio of interest payments to government revenue — “at levels consistent with Aaa ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion.”

That difficulty has been well-illustrated recently in Greece and Portugal, with strikes and protests as citizens hit the streets to oppose tough austerity measures that directly reduce entitlements and state benefits. “It was to be expected that attention wouldn’t long be restricted to Southern Europe but would shift to other countries with big debts,” Michael Heise, chief economist for the German insurer Allianz in Munich, said.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany have always been rated triple-A by Moody’s, with the United States first rated in 1949. Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s, stressed that none of their ratings were “threatened so far.” But he did differentiate among the top countries, noting that Britain and the United States are in the toughest position.


What dark pope was ever given such power?

By what authority do the villains who defrauded the world place themselves on a throne, and pass judgment on its states and nations? Today California and Greece, tomorrow the United States and Britain, next year Germany and Japan.

The Wall Street banks failed, entirely by their own action. Their terror was almost at an end, but they raised the fear levels to a final crescendo, proclaiming that everything in the world would tumble down without them. And it worked: “We the People” had our blood tapped to rescue them.

Now the Wall Street mob come to rob the same nations and states who rescued them of a few interest points more, and in the process to destroy and discredit the institutions and the people who might have the power and eventually develop the inclination to resist them.

Those who do not meet Moody’s standards will pay more, it’s that simple. Moody’s and the rest of the bankster filth get to dictate that state budgets must be cut, taxes on the rich kept low, services scaled back, infrastructures allowed to rot, sweetheart deals with connected contractors go forward, school teachers fired and children left to wallow. If not, they lower the credit rating and demand a higher cut of the budget.

This is the latest price we pay for that cowardly act of appeasement by the leaders in Washington, Republican and Democrat, in September 2008.

Turn on your TV, and you can see propaganda spots for Bank of America and CitiGroup, paid by your taxes - “the bailout” - and by the cheapening of your currency that allowed the Federal Reserve to flood these zombie banks with cash.

Read the gossip pages, and you can find out how some of the leading criminals are posing as philanthropists, or using their latest round of bonuses to frolic with the stars. Paid by you. Watch the news, and you will learn of their lobby’s latest successes in Washington, and again the lobbyists are paid - millions - by you, to screw you.

Banking regulation? That has to go through legislative bodies filled with the paid servants of the banks, like Chairman Dodd, and even if some minor restraints do come out of the effort, the process takes years.

Meanwhile, Moody’s can downgrade a country in less time than it takes for Madam Speaker to read the title of a bill. As soon as it is spoken, their decree hits with the force of a natural disaster.

California, the United States, Greece and the EU, and all the other world’s nations should not be living in terror of Moody's.

The Moody's executives should be living in terror that law enforcement agencies are about to knock down the doors of their offices at World Trade Center 7 and seize their files, search their homes, take their Blackberries, lead them off in cuffs. Tomorrow morning would not be soon enough.

The loose ends that unravel the Wall Street criminal complexes are there, with the "auditors" - consigliere - who have shielded and decorated the Goldman Sachses and the Citis and the AIGs, the JPMs and BoAs.

Here is my powerless Internet cry for the day, and if there’s a spirit in the world after all, may it be magnified a trillion times and come true before this year is out:

Seize Moody's. Now.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:22 am

Since it's the NYT I guess it is finally alright to post such a conspiracy theory. Or is the Times now fodder for the dungeon? No offense to the dungeon, offensive enough, it is

Image



The Moody's executives should be living in terror that law enforcement agencies are about to knock down the doors of their offices at World Trade Center 7 and seize their files, search their homes, take their Blackberries, lead them off in cuffs. Tomorrow morning would not be soon enough.



Do I smell another plane not hitting WW7?
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:41 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby nathan28 » Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:38 am

DU'ers are retarded, present company excluded. I don't know why you'd even bother with them, they're politically astute in the same way people that watch the NFL are athletic. IDK how it is that warning about the press's shilling for austerity measures, which is obvious in the Times, is "postulat[ing] a global coup d'etat" but I guess that's what happens when you take too many hits of Changehope. Some other hilarious tidbits like "we got ourselves into this mess"--um, no, I sure don't remember getting a vote on that, or having the slightest inkling that buying a house was a good specuvestment since 2002 or so. Anyway, well, who am I to speak, though, there is a thread on the reality of chemtrails a few posts below this.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby Nordic » Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:46 am

The fraud that Moody's perpetrated upon the world is the "Anthrax killer" of the recent financial 9/11.

Everybody sorta goes "oh yeah, whatever happened to that?" but nobody ever follows through, there's been no investigation, no heads have rolled or will ever roll.

But yes indeed, the fact that Moody's rated that junk at AAA so that retirement funds would buy up that shit was pure fraud.

Moody's is still calling the shots.

Why?

It has always bothered me and I'm sure it always will.

Fuck Moody's. They should be dead and buried after what the did.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby Gouda » Wed Mar 17, 2010 2:32 am

February 16 / 17, 2008:

The Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Terrorism flourishes brazenly at Ground Zero, in the new 7 World Trade Center building. Here can be found a secretive entity of fabulous wealth and power. Kingdom and corporations alike tremble at its shadow and make haste to pay it tribute. I refer to Moodys Investor Services, wholly owned subsidiary of Moody's Corporation, which reported $2 billion in revenues in 2006.

On January 10 Moody's, in concert with the other main bond rating firm, Standard and Poor's, gave the United States its top AAA credit rating. The terrorist blackmail threat came in the form of a demand by Moody's that the U.S. government "reform" Social Security and Medicare: "In the very long term, the rating could come under pressure if reform of Medicare and Social Security is not carried out as these two programs are the largest threats to the long-term financial health of the United States and to the government's Aaa rating."

Steven Hess, Moody's top analyst for the US economy spelled it out even more explicitly to the London Financial Times: "If no policy changes are made, in 10 years from now we would have to look very seriously at whether the US is still a triple-A credit. The US rating is the anchor of the world's financial system. If you have a downgrade, you have a problem."

US interrogators torture men in secret prisons seeking to catch those members of Al Quaeda still at large, starting with Osama bin Laden and Aiman al-Zwahiri. Yet here's Moody's man calmly threatening to destroy the US government's credit ranking unless it follows his agenda, and he strolls around Lower Manhattan unmolested, even if his threats could add up to the financial equvalent of a thermonuclear device planted under the Statue of Liberty.

Moody's runs a protection game (...)
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby Nordic » Wed Mar 17, 2010 3:22 am

It's fucking bullshit considering that the biggest contributor to the deficits in this country are the WARS (two of them!) and the EMPIRE, and the runaway Corporate Welfare that is the Military Industrial State.

Yet they want to lay the blame on social security and medicare.

What a bunch of scum sucking pig fuckers.
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Sometimes I have to recommend John Stewart...

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Mar 17, 2010 12:47 pm

He's especially strong on the bankster fraud.

He did a spectacular summary of how it worked, including the role of the ratings agencies, last night at the top of his show:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episod ... 0-jude-law
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby norton ash » Wed Mar 17, 2010 2:25 pm

Yes, I'm in full agreement on Stewart's excellent analogy. This should be required viewing for ordinary folk mystified by what exactly the banksters did, got away with, and will continue to do.

Sigh. We are SO fucked.
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Re: Sometimes I have to recommend John Stewart...

Postby Nordic » Wed Mar 17, 2010 3:01 pm

JackRiddler wrote:He's especially strong on the bankster fraud.

He did a spectacular summary of how it worked, including the role of the ratings agencies, last night at the top of his show:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episod ... 0-jude-law



Yeah, that was brilliant.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Mar 27, 2010 3:58 pm

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn03262010.html

Moody’s is at it again

The bond-rating service, of which billionaire Warren Buffett owned quite recently a dominant 20 per cent slice, has once again announced that the U.S. has moved “substantially” closer to losing its top-drawer, triple A rating for its Treasury bonds. This came in the same week that doomsayers relayed the claim – analyzed by Dave Lindorff on this site today – that the Social Security “crisis” is upon us at last, since payouts from the system to beneficiaries have this year exceeded receipts into the system from the payroll tax.

A little over two years ago, on January 10, 2008, Moody's was more explicit in its attack. It issued an astonishing demand that the U.S. government “reform” Social Security and Medicare: “In the very long term, the rating could come under pressure if reform of Medicare and Social Security is not carried out as these two programs are the largest threats to the long-term financial health of the United States and to the government's AAA rating.”

Steven Hess, Moody's top analyst for the U.S. economy, spelled it out even more explicitly to the London Financial Times: “If no policy changes are made, in 10 years from now, we would have to look very seriously at whether the U.S. is still a triple-A credit. The U.S. rating is the anchor of the world's financial system. If you have a downgrade, you have a problem.”

As I wrote at the time, U.S. interrogators torture men in secret prisons seeking to catch those members of al-Qaeda still at large, starting with Osama bin Laden and Aiman al-Zwahiri. Yet, here's Moody's man calmly threatening to destroy the U.S. government's credit ranking unless it follows his agenda, and he strolls around Lower Manhattan unmolested, even if his threats could add up to the financial equivalent of a thermonuclear device planted under the Statue of Liberty.

Moody's runs a protection racket. It issues credit ratings (in 2007, no less than 39 per cent of the global credit rating market by revenue, according to Bloomberg) based on public data and private information made available by those clients that have “voluntarily” retained their services. The price of not volunteering can be high, since Moody’s can (and has) exact swift revenge by blackjacking the uncooperative business by hammering its rating.

Of course the terrorists in lower Manhattan want Wall Street to get its mitts on the pools of money held in the Social Security trust funds. But if Moody's is going to present itself as a major political player, presuming to dictate national policy down the barrel of a financial gun, its executives and analysts should be called to give a public account of themselves and their designs.

Here’s a fine opportunity in the upcoming hearings on financial reform. Let Senator Dodd’s committee haul in Moody’s execs for a grilling. Have them explain their own role in the financial crisis by giving positive ratings to the debt instruments that blew the system apart with the collapse of the housing bubble and its impact on the home mortgage market.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby StarmanSkye » Sat Mar 27, 2010 4:07 pm

^^^
BRILLIANT.

The 'terrorists' are in our midst, dining at the finest restaurants, consorting with high-cadre criminals, basking in the false light of fabricated public acclaim. The system is being run by lunatics.
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Re: Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:59 pm

Great OP, JackRiddler!

Moody's absolutely has flown under the radar on this, and you laid it out perfectly.

I walk past building 7 on my way to work every day, and I always want to throw a flaming bag of poop in the lobby. I wouldn't make it past the 6-20 (depending on the day) black uniformed Officer Friendlies swarming the area, though.

Just thinking about those assholes manipulating the ratings is enough to make my freaking blood boil.

Argh!
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