September 18, 2011 journal, protest against Wall Street in their influence on Washington. The U.N. says America is in violation of their International Covenant on the homeless. The 3 articles herein are all related coming from all those greedy Wall Street Banksters. I have been saying all of the time that the price of crude oil is being fixed by Wall Street. They make money trading it up and down then the greedy oil companies enjoy the profits. Sept. 16 (Bloomberg)-"Wall Street firms will be the target of a nonviolent demonstration in which organizers say they want 20,000 people to participate with tents, kitchens and "peaceful barricades." Dubbed "#OccupyWallStreet," the goal of the protest in lower Manhattan is to get President Barack Obama to establish a commission to end "the influence money has over our representatives in Washington," according to the website of Adbusters, a group promoting the demonstration. Organizers plan to start on Sept. 17 and want participants to "occupy" the area for "a few months," according to the website. "People have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday at a press conference. "As long as they do it where other people's rights are respected, this is the place where people can speak their minds, and that's what makes New York New York." The New York City Police Department is aware of the protest and is "planning accordingly," Paul Browne, a spokesman for the department, said in an e-mail. NYSE Euronext, Deutsche Bank AG and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. are among firms with operations in the area. Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc.are among financial firms whose main offices aren't on Wall Street. Rich Adamonis, a spokesman for the NYSE, Duncan King of Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York's Ron Gruendl declined to comment on the demonstration. A New Orleans-style jazz band led a rally against Wall Street yesterday from a dais in downtown San Francisco. Protests also are planned for financial districts in Madrid, Milan, London and Paris, according to a bulletin from the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center obtained by Bloomberg News. The NCCIC is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Chris Ortman, an age ncy spokesman, confirmed the bulletin's authenticity. The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. With assistance from Chris Dolmetsch and Esmé E. Deprez in New York, Dan Reichl in San Francisco. Editors: William Ahearn, Peter Eichenbaum". At least they're not planning to put them in jail like Washington does their demonstrators. Something must stop the banks outrage foreclosures and creation of homelessness. Tent City New Jersey-"Doug Hardman wakes up every morning with a song in his head a vague memory of his days on stage. Inside his tepee in the woods outside Lakewood, NJ, at the homeless Tent City, the roosters wake early and the mornings are already cooler. A musician who lost his Florida home in the housing crisis, Hardman says he floats in and out of Tent City, that he's proud of his kids, and misses the life he no longer has. He has a lot of company out here. Tent City made the news recently and while community leader Steven Brigham says the media attention brought in greater donations, it also brought unwanted attention from the local politicians. After battling with the city for years to have access to the- Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lakewood-new-jersey-homeless-tent-city-2011-9?op=1#ixzz1YAhPyYal public land here, Brigham found a New Jersey lawyer to represent his case pro bono. The attorney, Jeff Wild, argued that the homeless population are part of the public and should therefore have access to public lands. Rather than take the case to court, Lakewood City Council settled, and Brigham signed an agreement to put up no more shelters and allow no more than 70 people to stay. But last winter the community put up three wooden structures to house everyone and keep them warm. "We didn't lose anybody last year," Brigham says, "and nobody got sick." This year could be different. After City Council members saw the shelters on TV, they sent demolition crews in. The walls were torn down around whatever was inside, and meager furnishings were left to the elements. This year, the tent city's residents will have to put wood-stoves in tents and plastic shanties, increasing fire risk. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lakewood-new-jersey-homeless-tent-city-2011-9?op=1#ixzz1YAifIOmD Brigham says the town is making it impossible to survive there, hoping to get the homeless out, and he's concerned it will end up killing people this year. More than 700,000 people are currently homeless in the U.S., the number has grown 20 percent from 2007 to 2010. A recent UN report says the way the U.S. denies its citizens access to water, basic sanitation, and criminalizes homelessness is a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Brigham can relate. He started the camp five years ago and more people show up every year. Some stay, some find part-time work where they can, move on, and wind up coming back. "There's a real glut of low-skilled manual labor in the area," he says. "There's just nothing for people to do." Brigham works as a high-voltage electrical contractor on the bridges and tunnels around New York, but his mission is here in the Lakewood forest. "I found this spot that had no underbrush, which is very unusual," he says, "and this community's become a living protest." I ask him what he means, and he says, "We are protesting the insincerity of the political system. It's supposed to be for the people and its not." (Reverend Steve Brigham can be reached at P.O. Box 326, Lakewood, NJ 08701) Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lakewood-new-jersey-homeless-tent-city-2011-9?op=1#ixzz1YAjAI2OO Oil prices by Wall Street=" I said all the time gasoline prices are being set on Wall Street. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-wall-street-doesnt-want-us-to-know-about-oil-prices/2011/09/14/gIQAiOodVK_story.html By-Bernie Sanders "The top six financial institutions in this country own assets equal to more than 60 percent of our gross domestic product and possess enormous economic and political power. One of the great questions of our time is whether the American people, through Congress, will control the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, or whether Wall Street will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and the lives of working families. I represent Vermont, a rural state where many workers drive long distances to jobs that pay $12 an hour or less. Many seniors living on fixed incomes heat their homes with oil during our cold winters. These people have asked me to do all that I can to lower outrageously high gasoline and heating-oil prices. I intend to do just that.Why have oil prices spiked wildly? Some argue that the volatility is a result of supply-and-demand fundamentals. More and more observers, however, believe that excessive speculation in the oil futures market by investors is driving oil prices sky high. A June 2 article in the Wall Street Journalsaid it all: "Wall Street is tapping a real gusher in 2011, as heightened volatility and higher prices of oil and other raw materials boost banks' profits." ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson, testifying before a Senate panel this year, said that excessive speculation may have increased oil prices by as much as 40 percent. Delta Air Lines general counsel Richard Hirst wrote to federal regulators in December that "the speculative bubble in oil prices has concrete detrimental consequences for the real economy." An American Trucking Association vice president, Richard Moskowitz, said, "Excessive speculation has caused dramatic increases in the price of crude oil, which harms end-users like America's trucking industry." After I released records last month that documented the role of speculators, I was criticized on this page last week by two former members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. I put the information on my Web site for three reasons. First, the American people have a right to know why oil prices are artificially high. The CFTC report proved that when oil prices climbed in 2008 to more than $140 a barrel, Wall Street speculators dominated the oil futures market. Goldman Sachs alone bought and sold more than 860 million barrels of oil in the summer of 2008 with no intention of using a drop for any purpose other than to make a quick buck. Wall Street, of course, wants to hide this information. They don't want the American people to know the extent to which speculators keep oil prices artificially high and the great damage that does to our economy. After the information became public, it was suggested that some on Wall Street may stop trading in the oil futures market. Good! Second, Congress recognized last year that excessive oil speculation must end. The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation required the CFTC to eliminate, prevent or diminish excessive oil speculation by Jan. 17, 2011. Months after that deadline, the commission still has failed to enforce the law, and speculators still are making out like bandits. Third, the commodity regulators' claim that they cannot end excessive oil speculation because they lack sufficient data is nonsense. As the information I released makes clear, the commission has been collecting this information for more than three years. The time for studying is over. It is time for action. I agree with former commissioners James E. Newsome and Fred Hatfield in one respect. Trust in government is at an all-time low. That's not because Washington is too heavy-handed with Wall Street. Quite the contrary! The American people are angry and disillusioned because they see our government act boldly to protect Wall Street CEOs but not ordinary Americans. When Wall Street needed a $700 billion bailout, the government was there for them. When working families need an end to excessive oil speculation and real relief at the gas pump, the government has failed to act. The same Dodd-Frank bill that required commodity regulators to limit speculators included my amendment calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve from Dec. 1, 2007, to July 21, 2010, the period of the financial crisis. What we learned was that the Fed provided $16 trillion in secret, low-interest loans to every major American financial institution and to other central banks, large corporations and wealthy individuals. The audit provision was vigorously opposed by the Federal Reserve chairman. It was right, however, that the veil of secrecy at the Fed was lifted and the American people learned about its actions. Now it is appropriate to lift the veil of secrecy in the oil futures market. The American people have a right to know how much excessive speculation has driven up oil prices and which Wall Street firms are doing it." The writer is an independent senator from Vermont. I appreciate Bernie Sanders bucking the system and exposing this corruption."