Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Bank of America agrees to sweetheart settlement with US Department of Justice

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, August 22, 2014

Bank of America agrees to sweetheart settlement with US Department of Justice

Click here to access article by Gabriel Black from World Socialist Web Site.

This brief article points to another example of how the ruling One Percent ensconced in major banks conceal their crimes with deceptions that are widely disseminated by mainstream media. In this example Americans have been lead to believe that justice has been served in the case of fraudulent practices committed by the Bank of America. You see, the system works! (sarcasm)

However, the author uses financial media sources to reveal the real truth:

On Thursday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had reached an anticipated $16.7 billion settlement with Bank of America. The settlement related to charges that BoA and two banks it purchased, Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, knowingly sold toxic mortgage assets to investors prior to the 2008 financial meltdown.

The $16.7 billion price tag is a deception. A majority of the money is either tax deductible or designed to support BoA while costing it nothing.

When members of the ruling class commits crimes which severely damages the economy of the entire society, nobody is prosecuted. When someone like Michael Brown in a St. Louis suburb allegedly steals cigars, he is executed. Ain't capitalism wonderful?