Forbes – Full Text: President Obama’s 2014 State Of The Union Address – 29 January 2014

As Prepared for Delivery –

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans:

Today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it, and did her part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest level in more than three decades.

An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech startup, and did her part to add to the more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years.

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HSBC’s $1.9 Billion Money Laundering Fine And The Somalian Cost Of Bank Regulation – 9 August 2013

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There’s an interesting little example of the way in which well meaning regulation has significant costs here. You’ll recall that HSBC was hit with $1.9 billion in fines over allegations about money laundering? You’ll also have noted that no one ever actually did prove that it shifted around money for Mexican drug dealers and all the rest. Rather, that it’s internal documentation processes were inadequate to show that it had not been doing so. It was not a $1.9 billion fine for laundering money: it was a $1.9 billion fine for not following the regulations about how to monitor and or prevent money laundering.

Read the whole story at : www.forbes.com / link to original article

Forbes -Bank Of America Sold $850M In ‘Toxic Waste’ Mortgage Securities: DoJ – 7 August 2013

FORBES

8/06/2013 @ 4:08PM

Bank of America BAC -1.91%‘s legal troubles just got more complicated today as US regulators accused it of fraud over mortgage securities.

The SEC and Department of Justice filed a civil suit today against BofA claiming the bank defrauded investors when it sold mortgage securities backed by more than $855 million in residential mortgages.

Read more at : www.forbes.com / link to original article

Forbes – John Matonis – Bitcoin Foundation Receives Cease And Desist Order From California – 25 June 2013

[Disclosure: Author serves on Board of Directors for Bitcoin Foundation.]

Directly following last month’s Bitcoin 2013 conference event in San Jose, CA that brought decent revenue into the state, California’s Department of Financial Institutions decided to issue a cease and desist warning to conference organizer Bitcoin Foundation for allegedly engaging in the business of money transmission without a license or proper authorization.

Forbes – Clare O’Connor – New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart – 5 June 2013

In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft MSFT -1.71% programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).

Forbes – Reuven Cohen – Dept. Homeland Security Forced To Release List Of Keywords Used To Monitor Social Networking Sites – 30 May 2013

If you are thinking about tweeting about clouds, pork, exercise or even Mexico, think again. Doing so may result in a closer look by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In a story appearing earlier today on the U.K’s Daily Mail website, it was reported that the DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as “signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”

Forbes – Shah Gilani – It’s Not Libor Stupid, Central Banks Are The Problem – 7 July 2012

( Lucas :  The blame game has started that makes it only interesting and gets us in the blaming more and more insights in those who have robbed us, deceived, enslaved us. The truth will come out whatever way. Soon the old will vanish from the screens and out of existence. We will see the new emerging.)

The Libor scandal is about to get a whole lot worse. And, that’s the good news.

Not only are at least twenty more big banks under investigation as part of a massive fraud to manipulate interbank lending rates that affect some $800 trillion in loans and derivatives, but the Bank of England is about to take center stage in the scandal.