{"id":17917,"date":"2015-07-15T18:52:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T18:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=17917"},"modified":"2015-07-15T18:52:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T18:52:07","slug":"5-tbtf-banks-get-the-boot-from-santa-cruz-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=17917","title":{"rendered":"5 TBTF Banks Get The Boot From Santa Cruz County"},"content":{"rendered":"

Santa Cruz County Votes To Cease Doing Business With 5 TBTF Mega Banks<\/h1>\n

by Mike Krieger
\nLiberty Blitzkrieg<\/p>\n

This is impressive. Very, very impressive.<\/p>\n

It appears that Ryan Coonerty, the\u00a0Supervisor of the Third District of Santa Cruz\u00a0County, wrote a letter back in June to the rest of the Board of Supervisors, in which he bravely pleaded the county cease business operations with five of the TBTF Wall Street Mega Banks. Why you ask? Well, because they are criminal felons. Considering\u00a0Eric Holder refused to punish them (see:\u00a0Cronyism Pays \u2013 Eric \u201cToo Big to Jail\u201d Holder Triumphantly Returns to His Prior Corporate Law Firm Job<\/a><\/strong>), someone has to take a stand.<\/p>\n

Here are a few choice excerpts\u00a0from the letter:<\/p>\n

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The banks have agreed to plead guilty to felony charges of conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the foreign currency exchange spot market\u2026 The behavior of these banks is offensive and signals a Wall Street culture in which several big banks broke the law even after years of strong criticism and increased regulation following the economic crisis.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cThere seems to be no limit to the greed in some our nation\u2019s largest banks. I believe it is critical that the County only work with the most trustworthy institutions as we invest and protect the public\u2019s tax dollars. Santa Cruz County should not be involved with those who rigged the world\u2019s biggest financial markets.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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It is important that we send a message that if you want to do business with the County, you need to play by the rules. Therefore I recommend that the Board direct that the County\u2019s investment policy be modified to reflect that the County of Santa Cruz will not do new business with these felonious financial institutions for a period of five years and further that the County unwind existing relationships with these five banks to the greatest extent feasible.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Incredibly, the board went ahead and voted in favor of Mr.\u00a0Coonerty\u2019s proposal. AllGov<\/em> reports<\/a>that:<\/p>\n

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The board, acting on\u00a0a request<\/a>\u00a0(pdf) from Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, voted to \u201cnot do new business for a period of five years with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS as specified, and further direct that the County unwind existing relationships with these five banks to the greatest extent feasible.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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That means the county won\u2019t buy the banks\u2019 commercial paper or investment services, and will withdraw whatever funds it can from them.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The banks made untold billions using a private electronic chatroom to manipulate the spot market\u2019s exchange rate between euros and dollars. The fifth bank, USB, manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), the benchmark interest rate that banks charge to borrow from each other. One Barclays employee said in a chatroom, \u201cIf you ain\u2019t cheating, you ain\u2019t trying.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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No one went to jail.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d like to think this could be the start of a much bigger movement, but I\u2019m not holding my breath. Well done, Ryan Coonerty.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a screenshot of the full letter:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa Cruz County Votes To Cease Doing Business With 5 TBTF Mega Banks by Mike Krieger Liberty Blitzkrieg This is impressive. Very, very impressive. It appears that Ryan Coonerty, the\u00a0Supervisor of the Third District of Santa Cruz\u00a0County, wrote a letter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}