J£w$ Got Mon€¥ #JewsGotMoney

(simply) ...A non-Jewish documentary director Sasha Andreas produced a movie titled Jews Got Money?, dedicated to these other Jews - the ones who didn't get any money. (Read this article) about the movie. Did you know that one in five Jewish persons in New York lives in poverty? If you didn't, you are not alone: the common stereotype all around the world is that "Jews got money." This is exactly the cliché that our upcoming documentary by the same title hopes to debunk.

Turkey and Israel about to change the Cyprus gas game?

Turkey and Israel about to change the Cyprus gas game?(CM).By Stefanos Evripidou (other) Apart from removing Turkish objections to Israeli participation in NATO exercises, the prospect of reconciliation has also “removed a big obstacle to collaboration over the development of strategic energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean”, reported the Financial Times (FT) yesterday.

The London-based paper noted that improved ties between Turkey and Israel could also affect Cyprus should greater energy cooperation result in Nicosia getting sidelined. A Turkish official told FT that reconciliation also made a possible gas pipeline from Israel to Turkey a “much more viable” idea.

The latest opinion of an advisory committee of the Israeli government is that if gas should be exported, it will have to go through Israel first. A Cypriot diplomatic source told the Cyprus Mail that reports suggest Turkey is seriously considering a pipeline between Israel and Ceyhan. “This could very well be a game-changer. There is much more (to the apology) than meets the eye,” he said.

Matthew Bryza, a former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, was quoted by FT saying that without Israel to provide economies of scale, “in the short term the Cypriots lose their ability to do a pipeline or an LNG (liquefied natural gas) option”, adding that in the longer run a Cypriot pipeline to Turkey would make most commercial sense.

According to FT, Noble Energy and Delek Energy, who are the main investors in Israel’s large offshore natural gas fields- as well as partners in Cyprus’ Block 12- have in recent weeks “sounded out possible customers in energy-hungry Turkey”. The paper noted that until now, the private sector was eager to proceed with a possible pipeline between Israel and Turkey but that the political rift between the two governments did not allow progress to be made. (MORE)

The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections

The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections.HT: EconomicPolicyJournal.(many faces in many places)The nomination of Chuck Hagel has prompted an email response from Alan P. at PEU Report. He writes to EPJ:

Pentagon nominee Chuck Hagel has his own PEU ties. I've yet to see the media report them.

Alan, also, provided a link to his post, Chuck Hagel PEU, which details how Hagel has been keeping himself busy with his bankster ties.
In his post, Alan notes that Hagel sits on the advisory board of Corsair Capital. a private equity underwriter (PEU) focused on the financial services industry. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation and Zurich’s Holding Company of America; and the Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank America, and is a Senior Advisor to Gallup.
Most noteworthy, Hagel is a director of Wolfensohn and Company. The company is founded by global operator James Wolfensohn. After Paul Volcker left the Federal Reserve to cash in, he chose to go with Wolfensohn's predecessor firm as a senior partner. Wolfensohn sold the predecessor firm when he became president of the World Bank.
In 2005, upon leaving as president of the World Bank, he founded Wolfensohn and Company, LLC, where Hagel is a director. The firm is privately held firm that invests, and provides strategic consulting advice to governments and large corporations doing business, in emerging market economies.
Since 2006, Wolfensohn has also been the chairman of the International Advisory Board of Citigroup.
In 2009, he became a member of the International Advisory Council of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation.
Bottom line, Hagel is operating at the core of crony corporate America and the expanding empire, if he is that close to Wolfensohn.
Neoconservatives and and gay rights groups are up in arms about some of Hagel's comments in the past about Israel and gays, but Hagel is a major insider. The empire will continue to expand under him, if he becomes Defense Secretary. For the real insiders, the Israel controversy and the gay comments are surface skirmishes, what the Hagel nomination is really about is a major league bankster heading the DOD, and in the end that means its about huge crony $$$$.Read the full story here.

That Chevron board essentially means oil money that is loyal to Saudi interests. Actually that is surprising since Hagel appears to be lenient with Shia interests like Iran and Hezbollah and their allies in Asia like Russia and China.

The Jewish Businessman Who Beats Warren Buffet At His Own Game

A little-known Miami-based finance guru, who 10 years ago set up a mutual fund to mimic the value investing style of his hero, Warren Buffett, had outperformed the Oracle of Omaha over the decade — and by a wide margin. Bruce Berkowitz, who owns and runs the $8.6 billion Fairholme Fund has averaged a whopping 12 percent annual return since he opened its doors Dec. 29, 1999. Buffett, who invests through his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, has posted an average annual return of 23 percent over a 30-year period ending in the 1990s, but has returned just 3 percent annual returns over the last decade.
By comparison, the S&P 500 index has averaged a 2 percent annual decline over the last 10 years.
How has Berkowitz, a longtime financial professional with little or none of Buffett’s love of the spotlight, bested his hero?
Well, for starters, he cashed in on highly profitable sectors — like financial and energy stocks — and knew when to bolt.
“He got into financials [early in this decade], made a lot of money and then got out before they blew up,” said Michael Breen, an analyst with Morningstar. “He did the same with energy stocks in early 2002, then got out before they had problems.”.
By contrast, Buffett stayed too long at the financials and energy party and was burned.
Citing Buffett’s refusal to own technology stocks in the 1990s, Berkowitz says he ran away from a lot of financials for the same reason: “I couldn’t understand them. I couldn’t understand the assets. I couldn’t even understand if some of them belonged to the government or not,” he said.
Buffett, said analysts, has also done something else Berkowitz has avoided: Berkshire Hathaway has become an investment behemoth and that has compromised its nimbleness.
That means it has lost some of its ability to buy bargains quietly. Indeed, Berkowitz says size is why he is doing better than Berkshire Hathaway.
Married, with three kids, Berkowitz has no desire to become the next Warren Buffett media darling.
“I do not enjoy doing television,” he said, trying to explain how someone can post such a stellar record compared to the renowned Oracle of Omaha but not get that much face time on TV. “I do as little as possible.”
“You mean no one has offered $1.6 million to have lunch with you?” he was asked, a reference to the most recent annual have- lunch-with-Warren auction’s winning bid.
“Why would anyone offer me a thousand dollars for that?” he asked.
{NY Post/Matzav.com Newscenter}

via matzav.com

This guy owns a lot of AIG. The company has seen its investor stake increase with money with the likes of George Soros himself. This is the company the country bought into and put on corporate welfare. Supposedly Berkowitz invests in Jewish history. What is it that he is buying? does anyone know anything about Berkowitz? I'm not saying he's a bad guy... I don't know him. I just would like to know who he is and what interest he has in Jewish history. What kind of Jewish history is this guy banking?

Mortimer Zuckerman: The Exasperation of the Democratic Billionaire

(WSJ) ...he supported Mr. Obama's call for heavy spending on infrastructure. "But if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program," says Mr. Zuckerman, "roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party."

Hamas Gaza Bank Robbery

Yesterday, Ma'an did everything it could to avoid mentioning that Hamas had robbed a bank in Gaza. But now that others have made the accusations, Ma'an feels it can report on the story.

And it is a doozy.

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

who are these Jokers and why do we call this political?

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Nof Zion will remain in Jewish developmentNof Zion will remain in Jewish development

Bank Leumi almost reneged on their previous deal with supermarket mogul Rami Levy and sold the rest of the Nof Zion project to PLO-sympathiser Bashar al-Masri. But luckily, justice has prevailed and Rami Levy and Australian businessman Kevin Bermeister have succeeded in buying (Hat tip: Israel Matzav):

via ibloga.blogspot.com

Bank Leumi was founded at the Second Zionist Congress and incorporated in London in 1899 as the financial instrument of the Zionist Organization. The initial capital raised - a total of £395,000 - fell far short of the £8 million target; Nahum Sokolow in 1919 wrote: "The British East Africa Company, which administered 200,000 square miles, began with the same amount £250,000."^[1] The bank's activities in Palestine were carried out by the Anglo-Palestine Bank, a subsidiary formed in 1902. The bank opened its first branch in Jaffa in 1903 under the management of Zalman David Levontin. Early transactions included land purchase, imports and obtaining concessions. Branches were opened in Jerusalem, Beirut, Hebron, Safed, Haifa, Tiberias and Gaza.^[2]The Anglo-Palestine Bank offered farmers long-term loans and provided loans to the Ahuzat Bayit association which built the first neighborhood in Tel Aviv.^[3] During World War I, the Ottoman government declared the bank, because it was registered in England, to be an enemy institution and moved to shut it down and confiscate its cash.^[2]
After World War I, its operations expanded. In 1932, the main branch moved from Jaffa to Jerusalem.^[2]
During World War II, the Anglo-Palestine Bank helped to finance the establishment of industries that manufactured supplies for the British army. After the founding of the state of Israel, the bank won the concession to issue new banknotes. In 1950, the bank was renamed Bank Leumi Le-Israel (National Bank of Israel). When the Bank of Israel was established in 1954, Bank Leumi became a commercial bank. ^[2]
The bank was nationalized in 1983, as a result of the Bank Stock Crisis.
Today, Bank Leumi is Israel's leading commercial bank, with $85 billion in assets and a presence in USA, Switzerland, UK and 18 other countries (as of 2008). Bank Leumi is mainly in private hands, with the government as the largest single shareholder, with 14.8% of the stock (as of June 2006). The other major shareholders are Shlomo Eliyahu and Branea Invest, which each hold 10% of the stock, constituting the control core of the bank. 60% of the bank's stocks are held by the public and traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

via ask.com

Historic Bank Leumi branch on Jaffa Road

via ask.com

Bank Leumi (Hebrew: בנק לאומי‎, lit. National Bank) is an Israeli bank. It was founded in London as the Anglo Palestine Company on February 27, 1902, by members of the Zionist movement to promote the industry, construction, agriculture, and infrastructure of Palestine.

via en.wikipedia.org

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Did the Poor Cause the Crisis?

the answer to the "Title" is NO. The poor were not responsible. It was rich liberal minded Upper Middle Class self haters that were responsible. Those are the one's who make a witch hunt... and I doubt they will point the finger to themselves. They are the one's who force a person to plea in court for things they didn't do because they don't have the money to investigate. But they were all just hoping to say they were more egalitarian then the rest of us... so they won't get caught. Am I bitter? I've just been in jail

WASHINGTON, DC – The United States continues to be riven by heated debate about the causes of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Is government to blame for what went wrong, and, if so, in what sense?
In December, the Republican minority on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), weighed in with a preemptive dissenting narrative. According to this group, misguided government policies, aimed at increasing homeownership among relatively poor people, pushed too many into taking out subprime mortgages that they could not afford.
This narrative has the potential to gain a great deal of support, particularly in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election. But, while the FCIC Republicans write eloquently, do they have any evidence to back up their assertions? Are poor people in the US responsible for causing the most severe global crisis in more than a generation?
Not according to Daron Acemoglu of MIT (and a co-author of mine on other topics), who presented his findings at the American Finance Association’s annual meeting in early January. (The slides are on his MIT Web site.)
Acemoglu breaks down the Republican narrative into three distinct questions. First, is there evidence that US politicians respond to lower-income voters’ preferences or desires?
The evidence on this point is not as definitive as one might like, but what we have – for example, from the work of Princeton University’s Larry Bartels – suggests that over the past 50 years, virtually the entire US political elite has stopped sharing the preferences of low- or middle-income voters. The views of office holders have moved much closer to those commonly found atop the income distribution.
There are various theories regarding why this shift occurred. In our book 13 Bankers, James Kwak and I emphasized a combination of the rising role of campaign contributions, the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, and, most of all, an ideological shift towards the view that finance is good, more finance is better, and unfettered finance is best. There is a clear corollary: the voices and interests of relatively poor people count for little in American politics.
Acemoglu’s assessment of recent research on lobbying is that parts of the private sector wanted financial rules to be relaxed – and worked hard and spent heavily to get this outcome. The impetus for a big subprime market came from within the private sector: “innovation” by giant mortgage lenders like Countrywide, Ameriquest, and many others, backed by the big investment banks. And, to be blunt, it was some of Wall Street’s biggest players, not overleveraged homeowners, who received generous government bailouts in the aftermath of the crisis.
Acemoglu next asks whether there is evidence that the income distribution in the US worsened in the late 1990’s, leading politicians to respond by loosening the reins on lending to people who were “falling behind”? Income in the US has, in fact, become much more unequal over the past 40 years, but the timing doesn’t fit this story at all.
For example, from work that Acemoglu has done with David Autor (also at MIT), we know that incomes for the top 10% moved up sharply during the 1980’s. Weekly earnings grew slowly for the bottom 50% and the bottom 10% at the time, but the lower end of the income distribution actually did relatively well in the second half of the 1990’s. So no one was struggling more than they had been in the run-up to the subprime madness, which came in the early 2000’s.
Using data from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, Acemoglu also points out that the dynamics of the wage distribution for the top 1% of US income earners look different. As Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef have suggested, this group’s sharp increase in earning power appears more related to deregulation of finance (and perhaps other sectors). In other words, the big winners from “financial innovation” of all kinds over the past three decades have not been the poor (or even the middle class), but the rich – people already highly paid.
Finally, Acemoglu examines the role of federal government support for housing. To be sure, the US has long provided subsidies to owner-occupied housing – mostly through the tax deduction for mortgage interest. But nothing about this subsidy explains the timing of the boom in housing and outlandish mortgage lending.
The FCIC Republicans point the finger firmly at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government-sponsored enterprises that supported housing loans by providing guarantees of various kinds. They are right that Fannie and Freddie were “too big to fail,” which enabled them to borrow more cheaply and take on more risk – with too little equity funding to back up their exposure.
But, while Fannie and Freddie jumped into dubious mortgages (particularly those known as Alt-A) and did some work with subprime lenders, this was relatively small stuff and late in the cycle (e.g., 2004-2005). The main impetus for the boom came from the entire machinery of “private label” securitization, which was just that: private. In fact, as Acemoglu points out, the powerful private-sector players consistently tried to marginalize Fannie and Freddie and exclude them from rapidly expanding market segments.
The FCIC Republicans are right to place the government at the center of what went wrong. But this was not a case of over-regulating and over-reaching. On the contrary, 30 years of financial deregulation, made possible by capturing the hearts and minds of regulators, and of politicians on both sides of the aisle, gave a narrow private-sector elite – mostly on Wall Street – almost all the upside of the housing boom.
The downside was shoved onto the rest of society, particularly the relatively uneducated and underpaid, who now have lost their houses, their jobs, their hopes for their children, or all of the above. These people did not cause the crisis. But they are paying for it.

Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a leading economics blog, http://BaselineScenario.com, a professor at MIT Sloan, and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His book, 13 Bankers, co-authored with James Kwak, is now available in paperback.

via intermexfreemarket.blogspot.com

so nice to be extradited by a Liberal State for a misdemeanor. glad I could put their guilt at rest

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Debt tensions flare up as Ireland denies bailout...

wow is this familiar. I love the way the world laughs at America till they realize that their bath tub is full of the same shit.  Am I the only American that is tired of these backwards Eurotrash that think they are so progressive when in fact they are usually about a year behind... that is why they laugh at us... because they don't know shit. 

Peter Morrison / AP

A banner complaining about high shop rents is hung on a shop front in central Dublin Friday Nov. 12, 2010. Ireland's debt crisis eased a notch Friday after European governments reassured investors that new, tougher terms for bailouts will not expose them to higher costs on their current holdings. Traders have been dumping Ireland's sovereign bonds on fears the government will be unable to manage its outsized banking crisis and that new EU rules being discussed will force investors to take on heavier losses in case of a bailout.

via sfgate.com

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NIF marriage to Mondoweiss

inversion. first the Octopus of Jews from Nazi Germany and then the same language from Arabists about Jews. Second time around the original creator of the imagery of hatred is merged with the victim. Gives me recursion of thought just thinking about it. and the twist is that NIF who is supposed to be supporting Israel is flipping with the conceptual flipper. If it were a synchronized swim routine it would be gorgeous... but sadly it is hate.

New Israel Fund (NIF) – a powerful “progressive” foundation which purports to “work to strengthen Israel's democracy and to promote freedom, justice and equality for all Israel's citizens” – recently posted a link to an essay on Mondoweiss which praised NIF and their President, Daniel Sokatch. The Mondoweiss link appeared prominently on their home page, under their “NIF in the News” section.[xxix] While NIF can’t be held responsible for what others write about them, it is curious that the foundation would at least appear to tacitly endorse such an openly and viciously anti-Zionist blog such as Mondoweiss. It also raises some serious questions about frequent claims by NIF and its progressive Israeli supporters that they are “vehemently opposed to BDS and the broader delegitimization campaign against Israel” – positions which, NIF must be aware, are passionately championed by the bloggers of Mondoweiss

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Nazi cartoon, circa 1938--An octopus with a Star of David over its head has its tentacles encompass the world.[i]

 

Nazi, Soviet, and, more recently, Arab anti-Semitic caricatures often portray Jews as spiders, cockroaches, and Octopuses – dehumanizing Jews by turning them into animals that are destructive, inhuman and evil. The cartoon below, by the notorious anti-Zionist cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, was posted on the “progressive” Jewish anti-Zionist blog, Mondoweiss recently[ii] – by a frequent Mondoweiss blogger named Seham[iii] – in reference to the Gaza flotilla incident.

This ugly caricature of the Jewish state manages to both employ Nazi-like anti-Semitic imagery of a beastly and monstrous Jewish collective while simultaneously asserting that the Jewish state has become the new Nazi Germany. (Note the Jewish Magen David on the Israeli flag is morphed into a swastika) Such insidious depictions of Israel and Israelis are mostly seen on extremist websites, and is a phenomenon known as Holocaust inversion[iv].

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

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