© Jossy Swan Digital Illustration (cake)
From The Press December 13, 2010
The secret club that rules the world
Maurizio Molinari
New York correspondent
Nine of the leading bankers of Wall Street financial institutions meet the third Wednesday of each month in Manhattan's Financial District to gain control of the market and the prosperity that most worries the White House: the derivatives. The administration has tried in vain to subject them to strict controls in the recent financial reform passed by Congress, and Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chairman advisor to the Oval Office, is The harshest critic, highlighting them as a market 'defies all the rules "and continues to undermine the stability of Wall Street do-while it has already contributed to the crisis of September 2008. But the pressures of the White House and Congress have a faint echo in the meeting that they see around a table bankers giants like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley primarily interested in maintaining control of the trade-annual multi-trillion dollars that are beyond any oversight because derivatives are largely non-financial products listed on the Stock Exchange.
So are traded privately, and often recorded in the financial statements so ambiguous as to suggest suspicions of wrongdoing. And 'just for investigate the possible risk of fraud are capable of putting at risk the stability of major banks - and thus the savings of millions of citizens - that the Justice Department in Washington has created an investigative task force, whose owner Robert Litan has discovered the secret of "Wednesday's club" finished yesterday on the first page of the New York Times. To give substance to the survey were the testimonies collected between senior officials from Bank of New York Mellon, founded in 1784, which allowed to reconstruct their request to enter into the "club on Wednesday" - which is called Ice Trust - was rejected by nine bankers based on the belief that "the request was not supported by sufficient volume of trading of derivatives during the year. "
"This is an absurd answer because we are one of the longest active banks in the financial district," he pointed out Sanjay Kannambadi, CEO of the subsidiary created by New York Mellon Bank to enter In the Ice Trust, which provides that "the real why we have kept out is the desire to maintain high profit margins and not share with others the drafting of the rules that govern this type of exchange. "
Faced with this reconstruction Robert Livan has done nothing to find the possible creation of a group committed to managing the financial derivatives market with non-public methods, raising the scenario something that looks like a secret society of bankers in the heart of Wall Street to manage the products that continue to be those that guarantee more economic profits.
Hence the investigation, only the beginning, which threatened to mess Wall Street. Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in charge of regulating the exchange of the majority of derivatives, suggests the need for "greater oversight on the work of banks" in order to avoid the risk of non-public arrangements intended born to "increase the costs for all American citizens. "
But members of the 'club of Wednesday `reject such accusations, saying the exact opposite. "The system created allows you to reduce the risks existing in this market and so far the cooperation between us has been a success," he told the New York Times, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank, suggesting that the super-club carries out those tasks control the financial reform has failed to assign any institution.
In 2007, Greenpeace conducted a survey of more than 40 experts, including government officials, NGO representatives and academic researchers. All were unanimous in saying that there are serious problems due to the failure of protected area management can restore our fish stocks in oceans and the vulnerability to climate change. This study served as the basis for the creation of Greenpeace Oceans Campaign, which has the primary objective the creation of protected areas in 30% of the length of the maritime area under the jurisdiction of the Brazilian and educate people about the importance of marine conservation .
Renewables are the answer to pollution and in large part, to climate change. The technologies are ready. Over the past 20 years have seen huge progress. Now serves the political will to promote it.
Using the translation of an information leaflet that the U.S. Agency for Emergencies ( http://www.fema.gov/ ) distributes to those who live near a nuclear power plant (the text I extracted from a 'article on the Italian website of Greenpeace) puts the viewer in front of the hand, clearly dangerous in the choice of nucleare.Altri important messages are given by the two post-it, one of which indicates the time needed for disposal of waste that would be created, or hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, the only "viable option" would be the storage of toxic waste. Finally, I draw inspiration from this anti-nuclear proposal to suggest another solution that engages the theme of "pollution" or renewable energy sources.
Projects proposed in the competition. ©
Jossy Swan
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Taken from the Corriere della Sera, June 10, 1974, republished by Garzanti under the title 'The real fascism and then the real anti-fascism' in the volume "Writings pirates" 1975
What is the culture of a nation? Currently it is believed, even by educated people , that it is the culture scientists, politicians, professors, writers, film-makers etc.. Namely, that it is the culture of 'intelligentsia . Instead, it is not. And it's not the culture of the ruling class, which, of course, through class struggle, seeks to impose at least formally. Nor is even the culture of the dominated classes, namely popular culture of the workers and peasants. The culture of a nation is the sum of all these cultures of class is the average of them. It would therefore be abstract if not be approved - or, rather, be seen - and lived in existentialism, and had he not therefore a practical dimension. For many centuries, in Italy, these cultures have been distinguished, even if historically unified. Today - nearly all of a sudden, in a kind of Advent - distinction and unification of history have given way to a type that almost miraculously fulfilled the dream of the old inter-class power. What causes this type? Apparently a new power.
write "Power" with a capital P - which Maurizio Ferrara charges of irrationalism on 'Unity' 12.06.1974 - because frankly in the Armed Forces. I do not recognize not even in big industry, because it no longer consists of a small number of large industrial to me, at least, it appears rather as a whole (industrialization total) and, moreover, as a non-Italian all (transnational).
know, because I see and live, some features of this new power even without a face: for example, his rejection of the old and the old Sanfedism clericalism, his decision to leave the Church, his determination (successful ) to turn peasants and petty bourgeois in the underclass, and especially his desire, so to speak, cosmic, to fully implement the "Development": producing and consuming.
The identikit of this new power of the white face still vaguely attributed to it of whether "moderate" due to tolerance and a hedonistic ideology perfectly viable, but also of the ferocious and fundamentally repressive traits: tolerance is in fact false, because in reality no man has ever been as normal and conformist as the consumer, and how to hedonism, it obviously hides a decision to pre-order everything with a ruthlessness that history has never known. So this new power [...] is really - if you really want to keep the old terminology - a form of "total" of fascism. But this power has also "approved" culturally Italy: so this is an approval of repression, even if obtained through the imposition of hedonism and joie de vivre . The strategy of tension is a spy, even if substantially anachronistic, all of this.
Maurizio Ferrara, mentioned in (like Ferrarotti, in 'Country night, "6/14/1974) accuses me of aestheticism. And with this tends to exclude, recludermi. All right, my optics can be an "artist", that is, how he wants the middle class, of a madman. But the fact for example that two representatives of Power (which are, however, now, in fact, even tentatively, the new power) are blackmailed each other about the party financing and appropriate Montesi, can also be a reason for doing crazy: that discredit such a ruling class and society before the eyes of a man, make him lose sense of opportunity and limits by throwing it into a real state of "anomie." It must be said that the optics of the insane is to be taken seriously: unless you want to be advanced in everything except the problem of the insane, merely to remove them easily.
There are some crazy watching people's faces and behavior. But not because followers of positivism Lombroso (as crudely insinuated Ferrara) but they know semiology. They know that the culture produces codes, codes that produce the behavior, that behavior is a language, and that in a moment in history when verbal language is totally conventional and sterilized (mechanized) the language of behavior (physical and mimic) assumes a crucial importance.
to return it to the top of our discussion, it seems that there are good reasons to argue that the culture of a nation (in this case Italy) is now mainly expressed through the language of behavior, language or physical a certain amount more - fully conventionalized and extremely poor - to verbal language.
is at such a level of linguistic communication that occur: a) the Italian mutation of anthropological; b) their full approval to a single model.
Now: decide to grow your hair from the shoulders, or cut his hair and mustache to grow (in a quote protonovecentesca) decides to put a bandage on his head or kick a scopoletta eyes and decide if you dream of a Ferrari or a Porsche, to keep all the television programs, know the titles of some best-seller, dress pants and shirts to the overbearing fashion obsessive relationships with women have held alongside ornamental, but at the same time, the pretense that are "free" and so on. etc.. etc..: all these are acts of cultural .
Now all the young Italians do these same acts, have the same physical language and are interchangeable; something old as the world, if limited to one social class to a category, but the fact is that these acts of cultural and this language are inter-somatic. In a square full of young, no one can tell from his body, a worker from a student, a fascist a fascist, which was still possible in 1968.
problems belonging to an intellectual ' intelligencjia are different from those of a party and a politician, even though the ideology is the same. I wish my current contradictory to the left understand that I am able to realize that in the event that the development would suffer a crash and a recession, if the Left parties did not support the existing power, Italy simply falls apart but if the development continues as it started, this is clearly unrealistic to the 'historic compromise', the only way to try to correct the development in the direction indicated by Berlinguer in his report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (see "l 'Units', 04/06/1974). However, lines do not compete at the Mauro Ferrara 'faces, "I do not see this maneuver of political practice. In fact, I have, if anything, the duty to exercise my critique on it, and maybe even quixotically extremist. So what are my problems? Here is an example for
. In the article that has caused this controversy (Corriere della Sera, 06/10/1974) said that the perpetrators of the massacres of Milan and Brescia are the government and the Italian police, because if they wanted the government and police, these massacres there would be no. It is a commonplace. Well, at this point I'll definitely laugh back and said that leaders of these massacres are we progressives, anti-fascist leftists. In fact all these years we have not done anything
why talk of 'Slaughter of the state "would not become a cliché, and stopped all there;
(and worse) we did not do anything because the Fascists were not there. We have just condemned gratifying our consciousness with our outrage and stronger and petulant indignation was quieter was the conscience.
Actually we did with the Fascists (I speak especially of those young people) racist that we have hastily and relentlessly wanted to believe that they were predestined to be racist fascists, and faced with this decision of their fate there was nothing to do. And nascondiamocelo: we all knew in our very consciousness, that when one of those young people decided to be a fascist, it was purely accidental, a gesture that was not unprovoked and irrational: it took was a word because this does not happen. But none of us have never talked to them or to them. We have now accepted as inevitable representatives of Evil. And maybe they were adolescents and young teens, who knew nothing about anything, and have thrown him into a headlong quest to simple despair.
But we could not distinguish them from each other (do not say other extremists, but all others). This is our appalling justification.
Father Zosima (literature for literature!) Has been able to distinguish between those who had stored in his cell, Dmitrj Karamazov, the parricide. Then he got up from his chair and went to prostrate before him. And he did (as he later told the younger Karamazov) because Dmitrj was intended to make the most horrible thing and endure the most inhuman pain.
think (if you have the strength) to the boy or boys who went to put the bombs in the square of Brescia. There was to get up and go to prostrate before them? But they were young with long hair, mustache, or with such early twentieth century, had bandages on his head or fell scopolette eyes, were pale and presumptuous, their problem was fashionably dressed all alike have Porsche or Ferrari, or motorcycles drive like idiots archangels with little girls behind the trim, yes, but modern, and in favor of divorce, the liberation Women, in general, and development ... They were short, young people like everyone else: nothing distinguished them in any way. Even if we wanted we could not go to prostrate before them. Because the old fascism, albeit through the degeneration of rhetoric, made a distinction: while the new fascism - which is entirely different - no longer makes a distinction: it is humanistic rhetoric, and American pragmatic. Its purpose is the reorganization and approval of the brutal totalitarian world.
Pierpaolo Pasolini
Taken from the site "Ticino on line" of 4/6/2009: http://www.tio.ch/aa_pagine_comuni/articolo_interna.asp?idarticolo=464556&idsezione = & a = 1 & idsito idtipo = 3
Seizure record 134 billion dollars in American securities
CHIASSO - On 1 June, at the international train station of Chiasso, the officials SOT (Territorial Operations Section) of Chiasso, in cooperation with the military Guardia di Finanza Group of Ponte Chiasso, have completed a record seizure of U.S. Treasuries. The seizure took place during the normal controls to combat illicit trafficking of capital and amounted to 134 billion dollars (143 billion francs at the exchange rate), representing a value in more than € 96 billion.
values \u200b\u200bwere owned by fifty-two Japanese went down to Chiasso train station by a train from Italy, at the time of customs control, claimed that they have nothing to declare. A thorough check of their luggage instead allowed it to find, hidden in the bottom of a suitcase in a closed compartment and separate from the containing personal clothing, No 249 bonds of the Federal Reserve, "American, with a nominal value of 500 million each and 10" Bond Kennedy "a par value of $ 1 billion each, in addition to substantial bank documents in original.
For bond interest and documentation of foreign exchange that followed them, also subject to seizure, are currently under investigation tending to establish the authenticity of qualifications and their origin. If the securities are authentic, according to the existing currency regulations, the administrative penalty applicable to holders could reach 38 billion euro, representing 40% of the amount exceeding the exemption admitted to € 10,000.
Taken from "The Daily Done"
September 19, 2010
Maria Sole was found there, in that editors. Naive combative, perhaps unprepared for the size of events. Thirty years, a degree in letters on Savinio, as a correspondent ended funds to deal with continuity of the clan of the 'Ndrangheta and Camorra. From Fish to Bellocco Casale. In early 2008 comes a Damascus operation launched by DDA in Rome, then in July of 2009 comes from Naples Damascus 2. The two operations are related. The first ends up on local entrepreneurs, the second thigh of Tripodo, the father and sons Dominic and Carmelo Venanzio. It also involves officers and directors of the City (which are only made to rotate in office). "What have I done? But nothing. I have only given an account of what was written in the orders or the report of the prefect. And I wrote a few brief comments to frame. If there's one thing I do not want to sound is the heroine who made inquiries prohibited. There are far more exposed than my colleagues, not to mention those from Calabria and Campania always under fire. For a while, 'I have not had much time to mute phone calls and push some of impatience. You know, every so often happens here with reporters. Once a colleague of mine was beaten because he arrived in a shed which had suffered an arson attack and the owners did not want to talk. "
The trouble is that making the obvious sometimes means exposure, even if they do not make other . If the connivance, Here it is as long, are wide and give the clan and their friends a sense of impunity. So the pressures increase when the Sun becomes correspondent Maria Sabaudia, his home town and vacation spot for middle-class Roman and Neapolitan, probably oblivious to buy the fruit carried by the clan Mallardo Giugliano monopoly on the vegetable market, or to take the the coffee table in the bar with funds recycled. Even smells like Sabaudia clan. We came with the blessing of the state, to confinement. Then they did what they wanted undisturbed. Investments in property, solid waste, in the funeral home. And politics has certainly not pulled up the barricades. A bunch of problems with administrators judicial interest conflicting with the City. A majority of City Council, Rosa Di Maio, prosecuted with his father and brother and the Cava clan, the Camorra. Involved in two seizures of assets. And the father who had been in handfuls of local rental property in the region, accused of subletting or change of use abusive in their face at City Hall. "He pulled out a well megaristorante with terrace, a local hairdresser. And I'd have to do? Silent? I have to ask whether or not face the problem of how to remain a city councilman indicted in that company? I have to ask whether or not the City because it does not ask in time to the Region of the funds to demolish the other apartments seized, constructed twenty meters from Parco del Circeo? Look at this photos. Do you realize? I have done no investigation, no exceptional item, wanting to be rubbish. But we must prevent the situation from deteriorating, because now Sabaudia infiltration are strong. "
The notice of crows, in fact. The e-mails. And the first (useless) letters to the editor, Alexander Panigutti, who seek to denigrate, who accuse her of being in league with the business, pulling in dance mom, employed in the province, and the father of a gym owner and his alleged interests. Maria Sole and there was no longer made the complaint. "For the rest I give a damn, but if they pull dancing in my parents in that oblique way not really. My maternal grandfather, Dino Bartolini, who is still alive, when he was manager of the Opera national fighters, refused a bribe of one billion, is clear. And my mother, with referrals made up some yards, poisoned two dogs. You see, I have my feet on the ground. For a journalist from the province the greatest satisfaction comes when after an article about a hole in the street or call sull'immondizia an ordinary citizen and thanks, saying the problem was solved and merit of your article. Sure would be nice to be able to do a survey of those applying for days and days of work. But it's not my job. Only, woe to step back. They've already done in many ...".
What is this coup? I know
of Pier Paolo Pasolini