Cultural Limits posted: " Eric, your next assignment is to cut off
financial access for all these industries.... When a number of former and
current porn stars were sent notices that their JP Morgan Chase bank
accounts were being closed for "moral" reasons, a number of us in th"
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<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/author/mynewpolitics/> Secret Hand Of DOJ
Surfacing In Porn Star Bank Account
Closings?<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/secret-hand-of-doj-surfacing-in-porn-star-bank-account-closings/>
by
Cultural Limits <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/author/mynewpolitics/>
[image:
HOLDER-OBAMA-AP_0]<http://mikesright.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/holder-obama-ap_0.jpg>
*Eric, your next assignment is to cut off financial access for all these
industries....*
When a number of former and current porn stars were sent notices that their
JP Morgan Chase bank accounts were being closed for "moral" reasons, a
number of us in the blogosphere - including
me<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/jp-morgan-chase-closing-porn-star-accounts-citing-moral-reasons/>-
pretty much ridiculed the idea, siding with the porn people over
really
dumb bank policy.
However, it looks as if there might be more to this than meets the eye.
In a series of op-eds, articles and accounts, dots are being connected that
tell us perhaps this has something to do with Eric Holder's Justice
Department's secret Operation Choke Point. The first piece in this
sequence (other references surfaced in the last year, but were largely
ignored) seems to be an opinion piece in *The Wall Street Journal*
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304810904579511911684102106>from
last week by Frank Keating, the American Banker's Association CEO. It
begins:
When you become a banker, no one issues you a badge, nor are you fitted for
a judicial robe. So why is the Justice Department telling bankers to behave
like policemen and judges? Justice's new probe, known as "Operation Choke
Point," is asking banks to identify customers who may be breaking the law
or simply doing something government officials don't like. Banks must then
"choke off" those customers' access to financial services, shutting down
their accounts.
Justice launched the effort in early 2013 as a policy initiative of the
president's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which includes the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
and other regulatory agencies. Though details are scant—much of the
investigation has been conducted in secret—the probe aims to crack down on
fraud in the payments system by focusing on banks that service online
payday lenders and other services deemed suspicious by the government.
Justice's premise is simple: Fraudsters can't operate without access to
banking services, and so the agency is going after the infrastructure that
questionable merchants use rather than the merchants themselves. Most of
these merchants are legally licensed businesses on a government list of
"risky profiles." These include payday outfits and other short-term lenders.
Curious, then, that porn industry workers would be included (everything is
pretty much out there to be seen), as VICE News
suggested<https://news.vice.com/articles/is-the-doj-forcing-banks-to-terminate-the-accounts-of-porn-stars?trk_source=homepage-in-the-news>connecting
a dot from this paragraph in Mr. Keating's article:
Bank regulators—particularly the FDIC—have joined in the action, warning
banks away from serving more than 22 categories of businesses, including
"Get Rich Products," "Ammunition Sales," "Pharmaceutical Sales," "Home
Based Charities," and even "As Seen on TV" businesses. Some of these
businesses may indeed be risky. But that doesn't justify pre-emptively
declaring them all criminals and freezing their access to the payments
system.
Well, isn't that special. Just because the regulators don't like your
business, they can tell a bank to not serve you as a customer even in good
financial standing and a clean credit report? This is worse the 1994
Community Investment Act that eventually led to TARP.
Fortunately, thanks to the wonderful world of the internet, word regarding
"Operation Choke Point" has gotten out of the board rooms of the banks and
onto plenty of binary code from all quarters of the blogosphere. American
left and right are equally critical of reports that the DOJ is targeting
any industry in this manner. A quick search of the term leads to dozens of
articles AND a Wikipedia
entry<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point>which is
certainly the tip of the iceberg, since it says:
According to the *Wall Street Journal
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Journal>*, "Operation Choke
Point" is an outgrowth of the President's Financial Fraud Task Force,
established by President Obama by Executive Order in
2009.[4]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point#cite_note-4>
It
also appears to have been kicked off under wraps by the Department of
Justice, FDIC, and the CFPB in early 2013 without the requisite statutory
authority. Officials at the Department of Justice have withheld information
about the program from Congress, though they have shared details with
federal financial institution examiners authorized to supervise and
discipline the nation's banks and related financial institutions.
Another Executive Order. Well what do you know. And they didn't tell
Congress. Tsk, tsk.
*Anyone else sense a HUGE Foggy Bottom Amnesia epidemic about to strike?*
According to *Reason Magazine
<http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/28/doj-operation-chokepoint-and-porn-stars>*
:
Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after
*legal* but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks
to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. *The very
premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an
attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own
politically biased moral judgements.* *Targeted business categories so
far **have included
<http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/sisum11/managing.html>**
payday
lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug
paraphernalia, and online gambling sites*. - Emphasis CL's
It doesn't matter that any or all of these businesses are subjectively
objectionable, they are still legal and as such the Department of Justice's
attempt at marketplace engineering or crippling the economy is clearly
illegal. If the DOJ goes after these businesses and succeeds in destroying
them by cutting off access to financial services, what's to stop them from
doing the same to religious institutions, private schools that do not
comply with Common Core, oil companies, and any number of other businesses
that might well stand in the way of the Obama administration's objectives? (
Infowars<http://www.infowars.com/holders-latest-scandal-doj-now-pressuring-banks-to-refuse-service-to-gun-stores/>is
reporting that gun stores have also been targeted.)
There's some scary stuff going on out there with this administration, and
Operation Choke Point is no different. If indeed workers in the porn
industry were targeted via this program, the attention their publicizing
letters from the banks received may just be what it takes to saddle yet
ANOTHER scandal on the Eric Holder Department of Justice. Doesn't matter
who is doing the complaining, if they are in the right, they are in the
right. And the word "PORN" in a headline gets a lot of attention.
Kudos to all who are shining a light on this secret strong-arming. Hope
they are keeping REALLY good records.
VERY important article on this at *American Banker*: "Operation Choke Point
Way Out of
Control"<http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/operation-choke-point-way-out-of-control-1067013-1.html>by
William Isaac.
*Cultural Limits
<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/author/mynewpolitics/>*| April 30,
2014 at 7:03 pm | Tags: Alex
Jones <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=alex-jones>,
banking<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=banking>,
banks <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=banks>, Barack
Obama<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=barack-obama>,
executive orders
<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=executive-orders>, Financial
Fraud Enforcement Task
Force<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=financial-fraud-enforcement-task-force>,
foggy bottom amnesia<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=foggy-bottom-amnesia>,
gun stores <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=gun-stores>, gun
stors<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=gun-stors>,
infowrs <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=infowrs>, jp morgan
chase<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=jp-morgan-chase>,
Justice Department <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=justice-department>,
market engineering <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=market-engineering>,
obama regime <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=obama-regime>, operation
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reason
chicks on the
right<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=reason-chicks-on-the-right>,
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secret<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=secret>,
social engineering <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=social-engineering>,
wall street journal frank
keeting<http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=wall-street-journal-frank-keeting>,
william isaac <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?tag=william-isaac> |
Categories: Eric Holder <http://mikesright.wordpress.com/?cat=2644178>, Obama
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