It’s more than the Arab Spring… It’s more than Occupy Wall Street… It began a year ago when the Tunisian man depicted in this photo killed himself because his ability to earn an honest living, as well as live in dignity was denied by the local police and the ruling authorities.
Of this Wikipedia says: “Twenty-six year old Mohamed Bouazizi had been the sole income earner in his extended family of eight. He operated a purportedly unlicensed vegetable cart for seven years in Sidi Bouzid 190 miles (300 km) south of Tunis. On 17 December 2010 a policewoman confiscated his cart and produce. Bouazizi, who had such an event happen to him before, tried to pay the 10-dinar fine (a day’s wages, equivalent to 7USD). In response the policewoman insulted his deceased father. A humiliated Bouazizi then went to the provincial headquarters in an attempt to complain to local municipality officials. He was refused an audience.”
The riots and blog posts/arrested bloggers in reaction to his death was what led to the first domino falling… It took many weeks to replace the government in Tunisia, many months in Egypt, and to a lesser degree government has now been cleaned out in Spain and Libya too. All across the world it has only just begun. Many more dominoes will fall.
Here’s a list of the ones most in need of falling.
The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 from the GAO Audit and are as follows:
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011) here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation