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The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Bowden

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Volunteer Moderators of the world unite, you have
IML Gear Cream!
Check this book out.
This is one of the best books I have read as to how the Wall Street crooks and the 1% are screwing everyone else over.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Divide-American-Injustice-Wealth-ebook/dp/B00EBRUB02


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The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap [Kindle Edition]


Publication Date: April 8, 2014 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis


Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.
Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice—the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights.

Through astonishing—and enraging—accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide’s punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all.

Praise for The Divide

“Ambitious . . . deeply reported, highly compelling . . . impossible to put down.”—The New York Times Book Review

“These are the stories that will keep you up at night. . . . The Divide is not just a report from the new America; it is advocacy journalism at its finest.”—Los Angeles Times

“[Matt] Taibbi is a relentless investigative reporter. He takes readers inside not only investment banks, hedge funds and the blood sport of short-sellers, but into the lives of the needy, minorities, street drifters and illegal immigrants, to juxtapose justice for the poor and the powerful. . . . The Divide is an important book. Its documentation is powerful and shocking.”—The Washington Post

“[Taibbi’s] warning is all about moral hazard. . . . When swindlers know that their risks will be subsidized . . . they will surely commit more crimes. And when most of the population either does not know or does not care that the lowest socioeconomic classes live in something akin to a police state, we should be greatly concerned for the moral health of our society.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Taibbi [is] perhaps the greatest reporter on Wall Street’s crimes in the modern era.”—Salon
 
The under-reporting of economic crimes and their effects in US media are so blatantly obvious, sometimes it's almost embarrassing to be included in what's got to be one of the most ignorant citizenry I think the world has ever seen.
 
The under-reporting of economic crimes and their effects in US media are so blatantly obvious, sometimes it's almost embarrassing to be included in what's got to be one of the most ignorant citizenry I think the world has ever seen.

Of course.
Many publicly owned media companies are managed and owned by highly compensated executives and owners that consider that their primary duty is to ensure their wealth and the wealth of their investors.
Publishing articles that might lead people to question the morality of the rigged financial mechanisms that allow that wealth to be created, maintained and grow to benefit the upper economic class at the expense of the lower economic classes is not in their own best financial self interests.
 
it's the federal govts. policies along with the federal reserve that created the wealth gap. it's the politicians who take contributions/bribes to legislate laws that benefit large wealthy corporations.
 
it's the federal govts. policies along with the federal reserve that created the wealth gap. it's the politicians who take contributions/bribes to legislate laws that benefit large wealthy corporations.

That's all part of the free market. Careful what you wish for.
 
That's what happens in a free market.

no it's not. that's what happens in a crony capitalism market which is what we have. the "free" in free markets means free from govt interference.
 
no it's not. that's what happens in a crony capitalism market which is what we have. the "free" in free markets means free from govt interference.

There wouldn't be government interference if business wasn't buying the government, ergo it's part of a free market.
 
it's the federal govts. policies along with the federal reserve that created the wealth gap. it's the politicians who take contributions/bribes to legislate laws that benefit large wealthy corporations.

Consider reading the book.
This is not a liberal left wing attack on free-markets, wall street, corporate America, wall street fat cats and the 1%.
It is brilliant objective journalism at it's finest.
It gives case examples backed up by documentation.

It documents as to how the system of justice in the U.S. has been corrupted to favor the wealthy and the 1% to the point that if you are homeless in NYC, get stopped and frisked and they find 1/2 of a joint in your pocket that you can go to jail for 4 months.

If you are an millionaire executive of a bank or a Wall Street executive and sign-off on a system that is associated with funding in example al qaeda terrorists by laundering money through your bank or committing massive financial fraud you can have your bank or Wall Street firm pay a fine to the government and not go to jail.

The part of the book that describes the history of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as to prior to his being appointed Attorney General that he was a corporate lawyer of a law firm that has an extensive history of defending corporations against government/regulator investigation as to financial irregularities, violations of regulations and how the Justice Department has decided under the Obama administration to not prosecute wealthy bank officers and Wall Street executives for financial crimes that almost destroyed the financial system starting in 2008 is interesting.

These bank executives and Wall Street executives by the virtue of their being wealthy get to commit crimes, buy their way out of jail by having the corporations and financial institutions they work for pay for their crimes by them paying money to the government, and keep their personal wealth and positions in these firms.
The lower economic classes by virtue of not having enough money to buy their way out of the crimes they commit go to jail.

This book illustrates exactly as to how the wealthy and the 1% are screwing over the rest of society.

They are considered by the government to be too big to fail.
 
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IML Gear Cream!
The executives and CEOs , Wall Street Hedge fund managers and other financial industry players in the financial crisis starting in 2008 should have been held accountable by the government and brought to trial for the role they and their firms played in the financial crisis starting in 2008.

Firms have paid huge fines and are paying huge fines to the government for their roles in the financial crisis.

Firms buy their executives way out by paying fines to the government, the executives maintain their wealth and in most cases are still employed by the firms that were associated with massive financial fraud, financial regulatory violations, money laundering that in some cases funded terrorists and committed other financial crimes

They are the 1% who are too big to fail.

The 1% and wealthy by virtue of their wealth can mostly ignore the justice system and the rules of society that the rest of us have to comply with.
As they are entitled to and receive any level of justice they can afford.
They, by the fact that they are wealthy and can buy their way out of being held accountable and going to jail are too big to fail.

Some homeless guy in NYC goes to jail for 4 months for possession of 1/2 a joint.
These executives and members of the 1% whose firms pay billions of dollars in fines to the government for financial misconduct stay out of jail.
 
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There wouldn't be government interference if business wasn't buying the government, ergo it's part of a free market.

you obviously don't understanding what free market capitalism is. It's the govt that's selling itself that's the problem. If something is not for sale it can't be bought.
 
you obviously don't understanding what free market capitalism is. It's the govt that's selling itself that's the problem. If something is not for sale it can't be bought.

Everything is for sale.
 
you obviously don't understanding what free market capitalism is. It's the govt that's selling itself that's the problem. If something is not for sale it can't be bought.

Still talking about something that has never existed in reality. The problem is that money isn't value neutral. And that's why no other country's in the OECD allow lobbying to any degree that it is in the U.S and why public election cycles aren't funded with private monies.
 
it's the federal govts. policies along with the federal reserve that created the wealth gap. it's the politicians who take contributions/bribes to legislate laws that benefit large wealthy corporations.

Actually the wealth gap started before the FED it's roots are in industrialization.
 
government cant serve wall street and ordinary people the same. obviously you will work harder for the one who pays you most, but officials forget they work for us first but who could really pass up that extra money and the help they provide to advance your career. just like crooked cops, they build a group within the group looking out for their own self interests.
 
I am going to give this a read. I have a feeling its nothing overly shocking less the details as to WHY it happens so many of us don't know about unless we are willing to dig to find it.
 
http://compliancex.com/from-billionaire-to-hedge-fund-insider-trader-to-prison-inmate-scammer/

From Billionaire to Hedge Fund insider Trader to Prison Inmate Scammer

Last week we wrote about Raj Rajaratnam (http://compliancex.com/orange-is-the-new-black-meets-the-hedge-fund-guys/), the former billionaire hedge fund manager convicted of insider trading and now serving time in prison for insider trading. We pondered the interesting scenario of how he would react to bunking with his old insider trading buddy, Rajat Gupta, upon his arrival at the same prison for insider trading.

We barely had time to reflect on the odd awkward coincidence of having two extremely wealthy and successful professionals jointly blow-up their careers by sharing and acting upon inside information and subsequently forced to live together in the same jail when Raj Rajaratnam resurfaced in the news.

Today we learned that Raj is scamming inside prison. I guess old habits are hard to break.

It was reported that a former employee of Raj Rajaratnam sued the used-to-be billionaire, claiming that he was fired for complaining about secret wire transfers Raj made to fellow prison inmates to procure favorable treatment.

The employee, Peter Malaszuk, alleged that the disgraced hedge funder sent wire fund transfers to at least 20 inmates at the prison in violation of federal law.

Mr. Malastuk claimed that Rajaratnam would provide him with the names and numbers for prisoners and contact information for family members to wire money through Western Union.

It’s heartwarming to know that Rajaratnam is still keeping busy and applying his professional skills in prison. I wonder when he will launch his next hedge fund from inside jail?
 
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