Think The Big Banks should be broken up? You're in good company.

If Republicans, Democrats, Independents, FDIC Chairs, Bankers, the Inspector General for TARP, Nobel Prize-winning economists, muckrakers, economics professors, Occupiers, and Tea Partiers all agree that the big banks should be broken up, you've got to think twice before disagreeing.

0:07 -- Bill Moyers (PBS) and Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone discuss how little has changed since 2008.
0:27 -- Robert Reich (fmr Labor Sec) explains why we need to break up the biggest banks
0:47 -- Sandy Weil (founder, Citi Bank) explains why he wants the banks to be broken up
1:04 -- Byron Dorgan gives the successful history of breaking up the banks.
1:32 -- James Rickards lists the folks who allowed the banks to get big again.
1:41 -- James Komansky (fmr CEO, Merril Lynch) regrets his decision to allow banks to get big again.
1:57 -- Luigi Zingales (economist, Univ. of Chicago) on the danger of consolidated banks.
2:13 -- Sheila Bair (fmr FDIC Chair) on why she would like to see the banks broken back up.
2:18 -- Nassib Taleb (NYU professor) calls the big banks a "cartel."
2:30 -- Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate, Columbia economist) on why we don't have ordinary capitalism when banks are so big.
2:40 -- Nouriel Roubini (NYU economist) "if institutions are too big to fail, they are too big."
2:54 -- Simon Johnson (MIT economist) wonders if bigger really is better.
3:18 -- Neil Barofsky (TARP inspector) explains exactly what needs to happen.

A few of the politicians who want to end TBTF
3:41 -- Elizabeth Warren
4:00 -- Bernie Sanders
4:17 -- Ted Kaufman
4:32 -- Sherrod Brown
4:44 -- (quotes Alan Greenspan)
4:50 -- David Vitter (quotes George Will and Maureen Dowd)

5:29 -- Robert Reich drives it home
5:42 -- Now what?
5:49 -- "After the Great Depression we broke up the banks. We should do that again."

Fired IRS Chief Testifies Before Congress Says Targeting Of Tea Party Groups Was NOT Illegal

Fired IRS Chief Testifies Before Congress Says Targeting Of Tea Party Groups Was NOT Illegal

The IRS has apologized for during the 2012 election cycling auditing conservative and Tea Party groups and singling them out for audits. This is a parody of the IRS explaining that their audits were not political.

Venezuela hardly hit by Toilet Paper Shortage & Food Shortages

Venezuelans have been hit by a chronic toilet paper shortage leading to empty supermarket shelves and long queues to snap up the remaining rolls.



Shop shelves are empty and people are down to their last sheets but the President says it is all an "anti-government conspiracy".Venezuelans have been hit by a chronic toilet paper shortage leading to empty supermarket shelves and long queues to snap up the remaining rolls.

When new stocks arrive at supermarkets customers have been rushing in to fill their trollies.

The country is used to a scarcity of basic food items such as milk and sugar but even by the country's usual standards the toilet paper shortage has caused considerable consumer panic.

One 70-year-old woman said she had been trying to find toilet rolls for two weeks before locating a few rolls in a supermarket in Caracas. Maria Rojas said: "Even at my age, I've never seen this." Another customer in the same supermarket, Maria Perez, said: "Here there's a shortage of everything - butter, sugar, flour." But, she added: "There always used to be toilet paper."

President Nicolas Maduro, who was chosen by the dying Hugo Chavez to carry on running the country and won April's election, claims it is a conspiracy to destabilise the country.

However, the government has agreed to import an extra 50 million toilet rolls to cope with demand.

His Commerce Minister Alejandro Fleming said "excessive demand" for tissue had built up due to a "media campaign that has been generated to disrupt the country." He said monthly consumption of toilet paper was normally 125 million rolls, but current demand "leads us to think that 40 million more are required."

"We will bring in 50 million to show those groups that they won't make us bow down," he said.

Economists say Venezuela's shortages of some consumer products stem from price controls meant to make basic goods available to the poorest parts of society and the government's controls on foreign currency. Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University in the US, said: "State-controlled prices - prices that are set below market-clearing price - always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union."

But economic theory does little to help those down to their last few sheets.

"I've been looking for it for two weeks," Cristina Ramos said at one store. "I was told that they had some here and now I'm in the queue."

Many factories operate at half capacity because the currency controls make it hard for them to pay for imported parts and materials.

Breaking Our Previous Financial Agreements to Government

Divorcing ourselves from previous agreements is sometimes necessary to create freedom ahead.

To create and manifest the new out of the old we sometimes have to break previous agreements and attachments to be able to move ahead. This comes in many forms which can be ties with ourselves which release us from old constraints, ties to others, and ties to the system we are living in. Contracts with ourselves must often be broken to release us into new vistas of possibilities which could not materialize should we still stay as we are.

This can sometimes feel painful and daunting but often we have to give up what we’ve got to get what we want, and give up who we were to become who we really are. A caterpillar breaks its agreement to being a caterpillar or wouldn’t be able to metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly. But the caterpillar doesn’t have to resent its previous existence, it can respect and honor what it was, but must still step away from it into what it is to become which breaks that previous contract with being a caterpillar, or it cannot progress.

The Toltec shamans talked of the importance of being able to break old agreements, as have other older wisdom traditions. Many people stay in ‘the safety’ of an agreement, which can sometimes be the wisest decision, but not if it is keeping someone from blossoming into the magnificent physical and spiritual being which they are, and certainly not if the agreement is killing their souls, keeping them as slaves and ravaging the planet they live on.

We are now breaking our old contract and agreement to the current global system that we have served for hundreds if not thousands of years. The interesting point is that we never really signed any formal agreement or contract, but the massive fear that underpins our society is what steered us to serve the system as its slaves. This has been deeply imprinted into our minds and souls, and each generation is born into the same acceptance of the unseen and unspoken, but very real agreement and contract which their parents and their parents were born into, of slavery by fear. 

The importance of being fluid and flexible at this crucial moment in human history can’t be overstated, and nature shows us again and again that if it is not prepared to be flexible it will pay a heavy price. The agreements that we have made with the system currently in place are very deeply embedded in our souls, and we have believed them to be true for a very long time, and walked that agreement every day of our lives. We have become like rabbits in the headlights, paralyzed by the nightmare we are trapped in. We are absolute hero’s to have endured it so long, doing our best to stay cheerful in this concentration camp.

I have talked a lot about how we manifest and create with thought. This is what is taking place now, as people everywhere have decided to break that unseen, and unspoken agreement they were funneled into with lies and deceit. The most important thing for us all as we break these agreements is to visualize a system beyond it, and believe we can achieve that vision, without any influence or control from the oligarchs.

When we break this contract we must be very careful not to make any other agreements or be tempted to accept any help from the slave masters that have controlled humanity for thousands of years. We must become independent. We are not to be seduced back to another prison of slavery once we are free, and we must be very alert for signs that we are being lured into another concentration camp once we leave this one. – Jason Liosatos. www.jasonliosatos.com

Pentagon plans to wage worldwide War on Terror for decades to come

After the attacks of September 11, Congress handed over the power to the Executive Branch to declare war. The Authorization to Use Military Force Act empowers the president to fight the 'War on Terror' anywhere on the global and is set for repeal. On Thursday, the Senate held a hearing over the 12 year-old legislation, but will this legislation remain unchanged or will Congress regain the authority? To discuss, RT's Sam Sacks gives us his take on the AUMF.