Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times

Why are there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street. We can’t afford this any longer. We need to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement. 1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-dollar bailout. 2) If your bank’s deposits are federally insured by U.S. taxpayers, you can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period. 3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another A.I.G. is building up enormous risk. 4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.

Light paintings

Alan Jaras writes to us: 
"I have always been fascinated in techniques which can reveal the normally invisible world. A long career in scientific research, using microscopy and scientific photography, made it possible for me to explore and discover new facts about many areas of the material world. However the story of MicroWorld - a strange and mysterious planet where the normal laws of science do not always apply – is one of pure Science Fiction.

Now I have returned from MicroWorld and retired from microscopy but, by developing novel photographic techniques, I am still able to discover new worlds. One such world is the amazing world of refraction patterns as revealed by my “Refractographs”. These light patterns, as a form of 'light art', are intended to both delight and stimulate the viewer's imagination.


(click to see Bending Light set, by Alan Jaras)

Goldman SUX

GOLDMAN SUX? Giant Squid Strikes Again at Occupy Wall Street's Credit Union 
Goldman Sachs Intensifies Threat on Credit Union 

By Greg Palast
Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, out on November 14. 


Art by Molly Crabapple
What have I done?  There's one angry squid out there. 

Last week, Democracy Now! and The Guardianran our story about Goldman Sachs yanking financial support from a community credit union for honoring one of its largest customers.  The customer:  Occupy Wall Street. 

Our report so enraged Goldman that, within days, it doubled down on its attack on the little community bank. 

Goldman had already demanded the return of its $5,000 payment to the Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union.  Now, sources say, the trillion-dollar Wall Street mega-bank sent the following message to the not-for-profit community bank:  "You will never get a dime from any bank ever again." 

About those "dimes" Goldman is taking away:  They come from you and me, the taxpayers who put up billions into the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP), usually known as the Bank Bail-Out Fund. 

For Goldman to suck its $10 billion from the TARP trough, Goldman had to change from investment bank to commercial bank. This change makes Goldman subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and requires it by law to pay back a notable portion in funds for low-income communities, abandoned by the big banks. 

In other words, Goldman is beating up Lower East Side Peoples (which operates in Harlem and the Latino New York neighborhood known as Loisaida). 

I would note that Goldman's nasty threat to cut off funding for Peoples, the credit union that is officially chartered as the bank for low income New Yorkers, came with a complaint about this reporter. 

Goldman claims that Greg Palast called only one time to get Goldman's side of the story. (I called many times, as did my associate, and we left the same repeated message: I want your side of the story. Please call me and tell me if you're punishing the poor peoples' bank because they are supporting the demands of Occupy Wall Street?) 

There are tens of billions of dollars at stake in the Community Reinvestment funds due from the big banks.  As other banks are making noises of heeding Goldman's call to whip the uppity little credit union, an answer from Goldman becomes urgent.