City Unions: Wall Street Looted Oakland
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/city-unions-wall-street-looted-oakland/Content?oid=3641115
Oakland's employee unions and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment released a report last week contending that banks have "looted" the city of nearly half a billion dollars over the past sixteen years. The report focuses on five "predatory practices" that, according to the group Reinvest in Oakland, have "gouged" taxpayers for approximately $468 million, a sum roughly equivalent to Oakland's general fund budget for an entire year.
"Our Oakland communities have been robbed blind by the banks and they need to pay back the money they took from the people of Oakland," said Shirley Burnell, an Oakland resident and member of ACCE during a rally last week. Councilman Dan Kalb, who also spoke at the rally, called the practices of many financial companies unethical. Kalb supports renegotiating bad deals and seeking damages from any bank implicated in frauds that have harmed Oakland.
Over the past five years, dozens of investigations by bank regulators and attorneys general have been launched nationwide into the practices of the world's largest banks. The probes have revealed numerous criminal conspiracies to steal billions from taxpayers around the globe, but local governments have yet to be repaid, even in cases where fraud has been proven beyond any doubt. In fact, some of the most toxic and fraudulent examples of bank wrongdoing are still affecting contracts and investments on Oakland's books, constituting ongoing liabilities that reduce the city's available funds by millions each year.
For example, according to the unions' analysis, one bank fraud affecting the city — manipulation of the benchmark LIBOR interest rate — has extracted as much as $15 million from Oakland since 2008. That's enough to fund Head Start programs in the city for ten years. While big banks booked these payments as profits, Oakland's leaders have been reduced to debating by how much to cut programs — like Head Start — or whether to demand more pay concessions from city workers.
(More at the link.)
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