Does Samsung Think they Co Own every keystroke you perform on their laptops?

Uh oh, here comes trouble. Samsung might have pre-installed keystroke detection software on their lap tops that sends out emails about what you are doing with "their" computers. Click here to read the Time Techland Story. You'd think that once you buy the computer it would be "yours", but evidently, that is not the case.

This isn't just about invasion of privacy, its about invasion of other people's thoughts, ideas, and future plans.

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Glenn Beck Would Rather Talk About His Made-Up Foreclosure Crisis.

Glenn Beck Would Rather Talk About His Made-Up Foreclosure Crisis.

I have been critical of Barack Obama and his mishandling of HAMP, and I trust the Republicans even less. I can't say it enough, the best presidential candidate in 2008 was Hillary Clinton, and that is why Wall Street supported Barack Obama instead.

There is a HUGE moderate middle base that supports Hillary Clinton, but the cable news media is pandering to progessive Whack-A-Noodle democrats and ultra conservative republicans.

In today's installment of the far left versus the far left, it's George Soros funded Media Matters griping about how Glenn Beck said very little about the home foreclosure crisis over the past year. Glenn Beck Would Rather Talk About His Made-Up Foreclosure Crisis.

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Court Grants "Godfather Privileges" in a Stunning Gutting of the Federal Hobbs Act in March 25th, 2011 Rennell vs Rowe Ruling.

CLICK HERE TO ENLARGE IMAGE.

I believe that the Federal Hobbs Act may have just been gutted by a March 25th, 2011 ruling in Rennell v. Rowe.

In sum, extortion under the Hobbs Act can occur outside of the labor context when a person uses physical violence or the threat of violence to obtain property, whether or not the defendant has a claim to the property. If a defendant has no claim of right to property, the use of fear to obtain that property—including the fear of economic loss—may also amount to extortion.

In contrast, where the defendant has a claim of right to property and exerts economic pressure to obtain that property, that conduct is not extortion and no violation of the Hobbs Act has occurred. See United States v. Sturm, 870 F.2d 769, 773 (1st Cir. 1989);Brokerage Concepts, Inc. v. U.S. Healthcare, Inc., 140 F.3d 494, 523-24 (3d Cir. 1998). We consider Rennell's assertions against this backdrop.

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"...exerts economic pressure is no violation of the Hobbs Act"...??? Are you kidding me!!! Exerting economic pressure could mean ANYTHING.

"Exerting economic pressure" could be no different than being in a poker game in which the other player has more chips than you and you can't match their raise and lose by default.

THIS ISN'T POKER! Rowe and Rennell WERE BUSINESS PARTNERS. The court seems to have forgotten that mercenary actions against business partners would be no different than the bailiff plotting against the courtroom judge that they work with.

Quickly recapped, Rowe and Rennell were business partners running a successful business. Rowe decided to replace Rennell and gave Rennell 24 hours notice to either take a $300,000 dollar buyout, or get nothing. The acknowledged value of Rennell's role in the business was approximately TEN TIMES the $300,000 dollar offer.

If Rennell refused the offer, he would get nothing, and might have difficulty raising funds for a legal battle. Rennell agreed to the forced buyout, and was also forced to agree to not sue if he took the "buyout".

On appeal the judges have sided with ROWE and against Rennell!

What if Rennell had refused the 10 cents on the dollar settlement offer? Two possible outcomes could have been; Rennell is escorted by force from the locations where Rennell and Rowe conducted business together, or, Rowe could have simply stopped paying Rennell.

The first of those two outcomes would be a Hobbs Act violation because of the use of force needed to escort Rennell from the premises. The second of those two outcomes, suffocating Rennell economically, would appear to be a Hobbs Act Violation under the extortion clause as well.

Is it ethical for the courts to allow one party with a superior financial standing to starve out their business partner or force them to accept whatever offer is being given?

The court itself cited the situation as "an offer Rennell "couldn't refuse", a direct reference to the movie "The Godfather". Yet the court than grants "Godfather Privileges" to Rowe! Does the court even get the outrageousness of referring to a mafioso practice, then handing down a verdict that sanctions mafioso activity?

It appears that what the judges are saying is that if you extort someone vis a vie paper or currency, it is not considered a Hobbs ACT extortion because the "threat" was not physical in nature.

Simply withhold currency, and no Hobbs act violation has occurred, what a horrible court precedent to set.

I also found the fruit store, "dollar a peach" analogy flawed as well. The judges were implying that the storeowner does not have the right to refuse service to a customer, and therefore the storeowner was not acting in good faith. A store owner can refuse the right to serve anybody. But the scenario cited above involves a different set of circumstances since it involves a business owner versus a customer, rather than owner vs partner, or employer vs partner. Very odd of the judges to use such a non conforming analogy.

The bigger issue is that if this ruling stands, extortion by paper or currrency becomes the order of the day, and the Federal Hobbs Act will have been gutted, big time.

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The Future of Manufacturing is Local...

A very powerful, earnest article about local manufacturing by Allison Arieff, click here to read it.

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Swarm the Banks Blog is designed to help everybody fighting Wall Street to stay informed in the fastest way possible.

I set up Swarm The Banks for those interested in getting as much current mortgage watchdog information from close to a hundred different blogs in the fastest time possible.

Unfortunately, of the approximately hundred blogs that are listed on swarm the banks, perhaps fewer than five have bothered to put a Swarm the Banks link on their own site. So, it breaks my heart when a fellow blogger mentions they have an "important" event coming up, and want me to write about it on swarm the banks, but they have not even bothered to put a link to swarm the banks on their own blog.

Isn't this the very definition of narcissism?

It appears that many "bloggers on a mission" somehow think their own cause is the most important, so "please help them get publicity for their own cause". Yet, in some cases these bloggers haven't even contemplated the importance of helping to send traffic to Swarm the Banks so that when they do get featured, MORE people will ultimately see it.

Anyways, here is a Bank of America Protest event going on tomorrow (March 26, 2011) that most people will miss because the bloggers that actually get hits from Swarm the Banks, are not sharing traffic back.

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Barack Obama's 30 billion dollar bribe to the american people to make up for a few million illegal home foreclosures, is it worth it?

Shame the Banks is reporting that the Barack Obama administration is proposing a 30 billion homeowner bailout (or bribe out as I call it), that would require the banks to provide a couple million homeowners who are in "distress" on their home mortgages and even home equity lines some type of mortgage debt forgiveness or reduction.

I can make an educated guess that whatever credit is offered, it will only be offered to those WHO HAVE A JOB! Imagine you have a 100,000 home equity line all tapped out, and the government is willing to drop it to 25,000. Sounds good, right? (or, view Naked Capitalism's take on how far 30 billion will actually go)

So I'm guessing the gotcha will be that one can only get the reduction if they can begin making payments on the remaining 25,000 dollars. Tell that to the 15 MILLION american citizens who caretake for family members with alzheimers and can't be away from home for more than an hour or two.

If there is going to be any kind of mortgage forgiveness, how about giving the unemployed an opportunity to have the mortgage foregiveness put into an escrow account and be tapped in small monthly amounts to make monthly payments on core bills such as water, power, food, and insurance.

What about the UNPAID CAREGIVERS, how will this legislation help them?

What is further disgusting is the TIMING of this proposed solution. It's now been almost TWO YEARS since Barack Obama took credit for HAMP. After tricking nearly a million homeowners into the accelerated loss of their home by following the HAMP guidelines, Barack Obama will now time his "solution" to be in full swing when he is running for re-election.

I think I'd rather see Mr. Obama tried for Federal Hobbs Act Violations, the extortion clause, under the color of right, for his public personal promotion of HAMP, and for possibly instructing HUD to lie about how successful HAMP was, then accept this latest 30 billion dollar homeowner bribing tactic to help get himself re-elected.

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All Money is not Created Equally, and that may be the biggest part of the home mortgage scandal.

(update March 31, 2011, the theme of this article has just now been corroborated by a Living Lies blog article).

During the fall 2010 congressional hearings on mortgage servicing and home foreclosures, some of the committee members who took statements from the experts would recite how their own home loans were processed. In some instances they were talking about events that took place in the 1970's and the 1980's.

It seemed to me that these congress people's experiences with their own home loans were before securitization happened in the late 1990's. It seemed to me that the congress people thought that their own home loans were funded by money from the fed and backed by the government.

The banks were supposed to qualify potential homeowners and use the discount in the interest rate they get from the fed as their profit margin, that was then, and this is now.

It seems to me that once securitization entered the scene in the late 90's or early the next decade, that suddenly non fed sources of money could be used to "back" home loans, and that these non fed sources of money had supreme power over the homeowner's mortgage.

Replacing fed money for home loans with investor money that apparently was less flexible when it came to refinancing, is where the fraud began in my opinion.

The moment a homeowners relationship with the loan origination source is compromised by a new entity who is not concerned with helping the homeowner, the system broke down and the judges need to step in to save the homeowner.

It's as if all that pension investment money floating around that is looking for a solid but safe investment is in competition with the fed itself. The Pension money is beholden to the pensioners who fund it, the fed is beholden to the homeowner's promise to be a solid citizen and pay back the home loan.

If the homeowner struggles, the fed has MORE OF A MOTIVATION TO HELP THE HOMEOWNER than does investment money that comes from a pension fund.

I think we need to identify and separate fed funds from private investment funds when getting a home loan. The blending of these two money sources and pretending they are the same may be the smoking gun fraud that needs to be unwound.

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Legalized Gambling Debt Can Suffocate a Cities or State in the same manner as the lottery and future pension obligations can.

Just like the lottery can promise instant wealth to those who win, or the promise of exorbitant pensions in the future in exchange for a contract settlement today, higher taxes in the future may result from , the lottery, future pension costs, and legalized gambling.

Lets start with a state run lottery program. Lottery winners in the first year who take their money over the next 20 years create a false profit margin for the state in the first year of operation. While year one of a lottery program will produce high traffic and minimal payouts, by year twenty the lottery program is now paying out 20 years worth of winners, not one year's worth, while still taking in approximately the same amount of money as in year one!

Some may argue, "the lottery has more winners in the first year because they have no other obligations". Well, that just means the lottery is a bait and switch in which the number of winners is kept artificially high the first few years to lure people in and addict them, and then it is switched to a lower overall payout as more and more winners have to be paid on an annual basis.

So the lottery starts off with a bang in year one, and ends up as a whimper in terms of what the state gets as the years pass.

But it's worst than that! The lottery money in California was pledged to go towards public education and only public education, yet politicians allocate the lottery money to public education to help meet the yearly budget obligation. In essence, the lottery money becomes a yearly foundational part of the budget rather than as a "bonus". This then allows politicians to then siphon other pre-allocated public education monies, elsewhere, while making it look like the lotto money actually went to public education.

It appears that most state pension plans will require down the road tax increases or they cannot honor those pensions. Making a promise today, in exchange for the requirement of a future tax increase, seems unethical to me.

Elements of both how the lottery works and how future state pensions are funded may be present when it comes to legalized gambling.

Gambling can only sustain itself if it creates consumer debt among the participants. Consumer debt that requires time to pay off results in more and more interest rate profits going to the banks, and not the city. With each passing year, the citizens of a city or state must incur a bigger and bigger debt for the gambling facility to remain profitable, and this means that with each passing year those same debtors will have less and less spendable income to spend in their own cities and within their own states while more and more INTEREST RATE CHARGES are going to the banks.

Yes, that gambling entity will presumably pay their own share of state taxes, but it still appears to be a one for two state tax trade off. Even if the casino pays state taxes, the consumers who frequent the casino will have an ever shrinking money supply to pay their own debts, and in turn, they will CUT DOWN on the purchases they make at other local stores THAT ALSO PAY STATE TAXES.

One way that gambling's overall harm to a city or state's future tax base could be minimized is if each citizen was assessed a maximum amount of debt they could incur that is based on their income. If the citizen agrees to never go over that assessed maximum debt, and the associated interest rate on that debt would have to be well under 10%, then legalized gambling might not be an economic drain.

Does this mean I am against Las Vegas? Not at all. I think its fine to define gambling as something one does as a "vacation". But when gambling locations start to spring up in every state, and gambling centers become so close to most americans that they can visit a gambling location within an hour's drive, in my opinion that potential gambling habit will ultimately hurt a state's revenue stream, not help it.

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