Faces Of Foreclosure

For the past year of dealing with my lender for a loan modification on my home, too often I wake up with bizarre questions (and equally bizarre images in my mind). Today’s question: What falls under the FBI’s definition of organized crime. Of course I am thinking of the white collar criminals running free in America.

And here are the relevant definitions:

Criminal Enterprise: The FBI defines a criminal enterprise as a group of individuals with an identified hierarchy, or comparable structure, engaged in significant criminal activity. These organizations often engage in multiple criminal activities and have extensive supporting networks. The terms Organized Crime and Criminal Enterprise are similar and often used synonymously. However, various federal criminal statutes specifically define the elements of an enterprise that need to be proven in order to convict individuals or groups of individuals under those statutes.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, or Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1961(4), defines an enterprise as “any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity.”

The Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute, or Title 21 of the United States Code, Section 848(c)(2), defines a criminal enterprise as any group of six or more people, where one of the six occupies a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management with respect to the other five, and which generates substantial income or resources, and is engaged in a continuing series of violations of subchapters I and II of Chapter 13 of Title 21 of the United States Code.

Ethics for Executives In the event you are a top level executive with questionable ethics who stumbled across this site, here is a link to a selection of books that we highly recommend you read. Apparently ethics courses are not mandatory in today’s business colleges . . . that is apparent, don’t you think?

Organized Crime: The FBI defines organized crime as any group having some manner of a formalized structure and whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities. Such groups maintain their position through the use of actual or threatened violence, corrupt public officials, graft, or extortion, and generally have a significant impact on the people in their locales, region, or the country as a whole.

Once we get beyond giving free rides to those with advanced degrees, you will see many more white collar criminals in their proper place . . . which will be in jail right alongside Mr. Madoff. “Robbery” is included under state crimes. The illegal and/or lost paperwork locking you into your mortgage should come under “Robbery.”

Excerpted from The Sovereign Society2010: The Year of Institutionalized Theft

Balancing State & Local Budgets
With the Frightening Power of Civil Forfeiture
By Mark Nestmann

While the talking heads on television declare the recession over, state and local governments face record deficits and a shortage of viable solutions.

Arizona’s state budget, for example, represents more than 50% of anticipated 2010 revenues. And while Arizona faces perhaps the largest per-capita budget shortfall in the United States, many other states have a similar funding crisis.

Unfortunately, there are very few politically expedient ways to stem the flow of red ink. Raising taxes is not only politically unpopular, but threatens to further depress state and local economies. Cutting benefits is even less popular.

On the other hand, confiscating the “proceeds of crime” has a near-universal appeal. And using “civil forfeiture” statutes in effect in all 50 states, police have pursued this tactic aggressively.

Civil forfeiture is a legal procedure in which prosecutors can seize your property without accusing you – much less convicting you – of any crime.

Most federal civil forfeitures require the government to at least demonstrate probable cause that your property is somehow connected to a crime to confiscate it. But the federal rules don’t generally extend to state and local governments. In many states, the government can simply seize your property and wait months before allowing you to contest the forfeiture.

While The Soverign Society considers seizing your property as a bad thing, I can see cases where it might be a good thing and a means to get back that which has been stolen from taxpayers.

If you are a good and hardworking citizen, this is a nightmare and should not happen to you. However, if you are one of those questionable citizens who came to your wealth by cheating others . . . which is commonplace these days . . . well, one can only hope they seize everything you have just as you have done to others.

America has Super Man, Super Woman, Super Bowl . . . and we have Super Thieves. Actually, the world has always had Super Thieves from pre-Crusades to Bernie Madoff and Hank Paulson (reportedly Paulson managed to heist $700 billion for his Wall Street cronies).

From a blog: If our country ever collapses from all these politicians ripping us off, it will be like in the French Revolution, these people will be hunted down and executed by the angry mobs. Remember that lawyer several years ago who ripped his client off, hiding behind the tree and dodging bullets his client was trying to pump into him and caught on camera? Picture Paulson, Dodd or Reid or all the other thieves in our government in that scenario.

and from another blog post:

There are VERY few losers in this scheme. You know, most of the investors are in on the game. They will be leaving the country in a year or so and going to the middle east where they will build hotels, casinos and shopping malls with stores that make Harrod’s of London look like Walmart. They have stolen the gold and now they are taking off to steal from the Arabs. Little do they know that gold will not be the new form of money in United States. They will not be able to buy from us, so they will have to eat the gold that they stole from the American people.

I don’t have time for this yet, but I reserved SuperThieves.com a in late 2009 as I am fascinated with these men and women who think they can get away with absolutely anything and who don’t care who gets harmed in the process. I like making money as much as the next person, but it is absolutely mandatory to screw everyone around you to do so?

These pages are devoted to the Super Thieves . . . with quite a bit of fascination. Who do they think they are? Why do they think what they are doing is acceptable? Why/how do they get away with it? Do they sleep well after destroying a life for the sake of improving their bottom line?

Years ago, during a long argument with a friend, he insisted that the Crusades were for religious purposes, whereas I took the stand that all “crusades” (then and now) are for acquisition of land, money, people, livestock, etc. Astrocities were committed by knights throughout the Middle Ages in foreign lands. The later middle ages saw a new kind of knight who was a professional adventurer, motivated by nothing higher than gain – a mercenary in fact. By the mid-fourteenth century there were large numbers of these men in Europe, with no place in society other than as soldiers of fortune.

One of the greatest scandals resulted from the recruitment of such men in the “Crusade” against the city of Alexandria in 1365. The mercenaries sacked the city, slaughtered thousands of its inhabitants (including many Christians although they were purportedly rousting the “infidels”) stole as much loot as they could carry and then went home, with the result that the city fell back into the hands of “the Infidel” within days of its conquest.

A successful knight could make an immense fortune, as can be seen from the example of William the Marshall and others,

Veterans of various wars around the world do not sleep well. How do people who rob American citizens of everything in the name of commerce fare . . . can they sleep?

This is beyond the current focus of America’s lenders; it will include the head of large corporations who poison us: i.e. Coca-Cola, cigarette manufacturers, unnecessary food dyes that are harmful . . .

Obviously others have the idea. The following is from one of those sites and we will be adding to the list shortly . . .

Editor’s Note: We are working on a project to identify where Goldman Sachs’ executives have gone after leaving the nest. We want to track where they have landed and what influence they have had on financial and political issues. When our research is complete, we will publish a FREE Internet version of our research.

Here is just a taste:

Robert Rubin – Former United States Treasury Secretary, ex-Chairman of Citigroup

Henry Paulson – Former United States Treasury Secretary

Edward Lampert- Brought K-Mart out of Bankruptcy in 2003

Joshua Bolten – former White House Chief of Staff

Erin Burnett – CNBC Host

Jon Corzine – Governor of the State of New Jersey

Michael Cohrs – Head of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank

Jim “The Mouth” Cramer – In Cramer We Trust – Mad Money on CNBC – Ultimate Jackass

Abby Joseph Cohen – Perma-bull market forecaster formerly of Drexel Burnham Lambert

George Herbert Walker IV – member of the Bush family and current managing director at Neuberger Berman

Robert Zoellick – United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), World Bank President

Mark Carney – Current Governor of the Bank of Canada

Michael D. Fascitelli- President & Trustee of Vornado Realty Trust

Neel Kashkari – Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability

Malcolm Turnbull – Australian politician, currently the federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia

John Thain – former Chairman and CEO, Merrill Lynch, and former chairman of the NYSE

Robert Steel – Chairman and President, Wachovia – Now with the boys and girls at Wells Fargo

Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy twice (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) and President of the European Commission (1999-2004)

Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy (2006- )

Massimo Tononi, Italian deputy treasury chief (2006-2008)

Add your favorites to this list, if you please . . . from any time in the world’s history, but specifically now so we can expose these pathetic people for what they are.