Wall Street Casino Style Practices ~ Les Leopold

Biography:
Les Leopold co-founded and currently directs two nonprofit organizations, the Labor Institute and the Public Health Institute, and is the author of the award-winning The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi. Leopold designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment, and economics and helped form an alliance between the United Steel Workers Union and the Sierra Club. He attended Oberlin College and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Director of two non-profits, Les Leopold returned to the show to explain how Wall Street's casino-style practices magnified the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis and profoundly damaged the U.S. economy. According to Leopold, banking firms, such as Goldman Sachs, wreaked havoc by selling incredibly complex investments known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). The banks packaged and repackaged the same risky debt bonds, which had no real underlying assets, into countless CDOs. Ultimately, this turned $300 billion of bad mortgages into several trillion dollars worth of losses to investors, he added.


One such investor, the School Board of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, lost roughly $200 million in this fantasy finance scheme. Large investment banks, on the other hand, were protected from substantial losses by AIG, which in turn was protected with taxpayer money, Leopold continued. The total cost (so far) to bailout Wall Street has reached $8 trillion, Leopold said, noting that this enormous amount benefits only a very small portion of the population. To avoid future financial crises, Leopold suggested breaking up 'too big to fail' banking firms, reducing the overall size of the financial sector through taxation, and imposing regulatory reform.

WWIII Hell War Looming as Russia Sends War Ships to Syria

I hope Russia and China make Obama and his banker handlers understand that this time someone may be able to fight back. Since Vietnam America has made war on people with little more than a Kalashnikov in hand and lost every time. None of these idiots in Washington seem to get the concept of a Constitutional foreign policy, or a Constitutional form of government for that matter. So go attack another nation and see what happens. Of course with Obama messing up the White House there won’t be any coverage of the body bags coming back here but count on it. The Russian military is damned good at filling the enemy’s body bags. Everybody in the US military service needs to get out now. If you elect to stay then the blood you shed will be your own.
Support for Obama's illegal strike on Syria is falling out of favor. UK and Germany now want some hard evidence. Russia is amping up the situation by sending more warships the region as well. Obama is facing a direct action with the Russian navy who will fire on US warships if ordered. If this happens it's game over and WW III will start.

Doom & Gloom: Global Unemployment to Explode , Massive social Unrest Ahead

Looks like civil war around the world its about to begin where everyone will start to fight for food & water. Ppl around the world will start to get sick of the cooperation corruption & enslavement especially in America. Expect soon enough a group & well train & organize fighter from America will start to rise & start pointing their gun on their criminal government. Thats when sometime in the future martial law will be declare & there will be fire work between American patriot vs fascist police.

With over 200 million people unemployed globally and no end in sight for the recession, the need for jobs has never been greater. Youth unemployment has reached critical levels and threatens to destabilize many countries. What can be done to create more jobs and kick-start the global economy? Guy Ryder, the Director-General of the ILO, joins Oksana to consider these issues.