New Revelation that AG Eric Holder
Is Protecting JPMorgan Chase NYC
From Criminal Investigation

By Mark Karlin, Editor, BuzzFlash

Providing additional evidence that the Obama Administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) is protecting "banks too big to fail," Pulitzer Prize winning financial reporter David Cay Johnston has revealed that the DOJ has refused to force JPMorgan Chase to comply with an ongoing investigation into the bank's possible knowledge of Bernard Madoff's fraud scheme of a few years ago.

The information obtained might reveal that the bank chose to financially benefit from criminal activity.

Bernard Madoff’s principal bank, JPMorgan Chase, has for years obstructed federal bank examiners trying to ascertain what it knew about his gigantic Ponzi scheme, an official document obtained by Newsweek shows.

The Justice Department refused in September to back up Treasury inspector general staff who wanted a court order to enforce a subpoena, in effect shielding JPMorgan from law enforcement, the October 8 document shows.

The Justice Department told the Treasury Inspector General “that they were denying the request for enforcement of the subpoena,” which means officials “could not undertake further actions regarding this matter,” wrote Jason J. Metrick, the inspector general special-agent-in-charge.

Johnston disclosed the latest damning indication of the DOJ shielding Wall Street banks that dominate US finances in a Newsweek article.

The DOJ pattern of not exploring potential big bank criminal activity was admitted to by Attorney General Eric Holder--as BuzzFlash at Truthout reported at the time--as recalled by Johnston.

Last March Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate hearing he was afraid to prosecute the Too Big to Fail Banks, as it could do even more economic damage, in effect declaring them Too Big to Prosecute.

“The size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy--perhaps even the world economy," Holder testified.

Although Madoff has been serving an effective life sentence in prison since 2009, a special Treasury Department inspector general with independent powers is still trying to ascertain if JPMorgan Chase turned a blind eye to Madoff's mega-ponzi scheme that left many individuals and organizations (including charities) with enormous losses.

The bottom line of the Obama DOJ's position is that Americans are left vulnerable to criminal bank activity on a massive scale because if they were held accountable, Holder believes, the US economic system would be hurt.

But the 2007-2008 crash showed what such uninvestigated and unprosecuted behavior leads to.

In short, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States is authorizing our largest banks to engage in criminal behavior because, he claims, preventing them from doing so might negatively impact our economy?

But hasn't it prima facie been proven again and again that the likely criminal bank activity undermines our financial system?

This is so nonsensical, such a defilement of justice and economic integrity that there must be another answer to Holder's protection of suspected (and as indicated in civil and other suits) criminal actions on Wall Street.

The financial masters of the universe call the shots in DC. 

Holder and his law firm base, Covington and Burling, represent many of them--and Congress and the White House are beholden to them for campaign cash and revolving door jobs.

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Why Not Require Drug Tests 
of Farmers Receiving a Fortune in 
Government Subsidies?

                                                                                 BuzzFlash

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More Tax Dollars There, Not Here

By David Cay Johnston*

Jul. 18, 2013--No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers, and erect barriers to fair play.

A big reason is that so little of the news...addresses the private, government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward.

You are being systematically exploited by powerful corporations every day. 

These companies squeeze their trusting customers for every last cent, risk their retirement funds, and endanger their lives.

And they do it all legally.

How?

It’s all in the fine print.

American corporations increased their use of tax credits by a whopping 25 percent in 2010, helping drive down their effective tax rates to less than half the posted 35 percent rate.

A Government Accountability Office study says the effective rate was even lower, only a bit more than a third of the statutory rate for the biggest companies.

“The increase in credits from 2009 to 2010 was almost entirely due to higher foreign tax credits,” noted Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, who crunched the numbers.

 “Not surprisingly, these higher foreign tax credits go mostly to large multinational corporations.”

Of the $26.8 billion increase in corporate tax credits used in 2010 compared to 2009, an astonishing 91.5 percent were foreign tax credits, which allow companies with multinational operations to offset their American tax bills dollar-for-dollar.

Because the tax credit is dollar-for-dollar that means less for Uncle Sam, more for foreign governments.

Foreign tax credits, the new IRS data show, totaled $118 billion in 2010, up from $93.6 billion in 2009.

Just 2,772 corporations, the multinational giants that own more than four-fifths of all the corporate assets in the United States, used a stunning 99.3% of those increased foreign tax credits.

The other $163 million of foreign tax credits were used by some of the 5.8 million other corporations filing American tax returns.

While foreign tax credits increased by $24.5 billion, the general business credit grew by only $2.1 billion.

Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax Credits grew by a mere $166 million–note the “m.”

The general credits increased 15.9 percent, the corporate AMT 11.3 percent, far below the foreign tax credit increase of 24.7 percent.
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*David Cay Boyle Johnston is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.