LIBOR-gate: Here Come The Arrests

by Tyler Durden on 07/22/2012 - ZERO Hedge


For over four years, virtually everyone in the finance industry knew that Libor was manipulated.

The stench of manipulation rose to the very top and thanks to a document release of formerly confidential information, we now know for a fact that even the Fed was in on it - recall that as part of production, the Fed provided a transcript of an April 2008 phone call between a Barclays trader in New York and Fed official Fabiola Ravazzolo, in which the unidentified trader said: "So, we know that we're not posting um, an honest LIBOR." And yet without any tangible, black on white evidence, there was no catalyst for pursuing legal action.

That all changed when in a desperate attempt to protect its ass, Barclays decided to rat out everyone by settling with regulators, and "turn state" producing e-mail based evidence, most of it quite visual (after all what is more tangible to the common man that evil bankers sipping on Bollinger), which essentially threw years of quiet cartel cooperation under the bus. As a result, regulators, enforcers, and legal authorities, many of whom were in on this manipulation from the beginning, no longer had an excuse to not pursue civil and criminal charges against perpetrators, who until recently were footing the tabs at various gentlemen's venues and ultra expensive restaurants. And while the imminent waterfall of civil prosecution will force bank litigation reserves to go through the roof, here comes, with a very long delay, the criminal charges.

As Reuters reports, here come the arrests.

But before we get into it, we wanted to share something mildly curious involving that British Bankers Association: the entity that until recently at least, was implicitly in charge of the Libor fixing, submission, and distribution process (also the entity that will quite soon be non-existent).

It involves the BBA's self-professed Governance process and obligations. The extract below shows what it is currently.

All aspects of the operation and management of bbalibor as a benchmark are the responsibility of the independent Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Committee ('FX&MM Committee'). This includes design of the benchmark and the governance and scrutiny of all bbalibor data and all panel bank contributions. BBA LIBOR Ltd undertakes the day to day running of the benchmark under the supervision of the Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Committee. As of 1st January 2010, BBA LIBOR Ltd. has been governed by an independent Board.

Thomson Reuters - the 'Designated Distributor' of BBA LIBOR - is tasked with collecting the daily submissions that are inputs into the bbalibor process and submitting them to rigorous checks before publishing the resulting calculation to the market. If any bank submission falls outside a defined set of parameters, Thomson Reuters will consult the contributor and request confirmation that the rate provided is correct, thus allowing any simple typing errors to be amended promptly. These parameters are agreed by the FX&MM Committee and are regularly reviewed to ensure they reflect prevailing market conditions and maintain the highest level of scrutiny over the rates.

There is a named individual at each bank responsible for submitting the daily bbalibor rates to Thomson Reuters and this will be the person responsible for the bank's cash - usually their title is 'treasurer' or similar. There is written guidance on what information that person should take into account when calculating that day's rates for his or her bank. As all contributor banks are regulated, they are responsible to their regulators, rather than BBA LIBOR Ltd. or the FX&MM Committee, for maintaining appropriate procedures for contributing, including the maintenance of internal chinese walls.

The reason we have bolded the third paragraph is that if one had gone to the BBA's Governance section as recently as a few weeks ago, or prior to Liborgate becoming front page news, the paragraph read something totally different. However, courtesy of the Way Back Machine, we have a great idea of just what the BBA quietly and under the radar tried to change vis-a-vis its own obligations and responsibilities in the Libor scandal. This is what the third paragraph said before.

BBA LIBOR Ltd. receives the fixings and underlying contributor data at the same time as all other live data recipients and monitors all submissions into the fixing process. Any anomalous rates are queried with the submitting bank, and a log of these queries is kept and given to the FX&MM Committee on a periodic basis, who may choose at their discretion to follow up these queries in line with established governance and scrutiny procedures.

Up until literally minutes ago, the question to be asked was why was this change made on the page, on a governance page of all places, a change which shirks responsibility and accountability and begs the question, did BBA log any queries of anomalous rates, did the FX&MM Committee follow up on any queries, or are they simply trying to bury something here? Now, thanks to Reuters, we know.

With arrests on deck, the BBA is doing everything it can to distance itself from what it knows with absolute certainty is about to be a shitstorm of epic proportions:

U.S. prosecutors and European regulators are close to arresting individual traders and charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates, according to people familiar with a sweeping investigation into the rate-rigging scandal.

Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have recently contacted lawyers representing some of the individuals under suspicion to notify them that criminal charges and arrests could be imminent, said two of those sources who asked not to be identified because the investigation is ongoing.

Defense lawyers, some of whom represent individuals under suspicion, said prosecutors have indicated they plan to begin making arrests and filing criminal charges in the next few weeks. In long-running financial investigations it is not uncommon for prosecutors to contact defense lawyers for individuals before filing charges to offer them a chance to cooperate or take a plea, these lawyer said.

The prospect of charges and arrests of individuals means that prosecutors are getting a fuller picture of how traders at major banks allegedly sought to influence the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, and other global rates that underpin hundreds of trillions of dollars in assets. The criminal charges would come alongside efforts by regulators to punish major banks with fines, and could show that the alleged activity was not rampant in the banks.

Actually what it will show is that criminal activity was not only rampant, but everyone knew about it, certainly the regualtors, and most certainly the Fed and the BOE. After all how could they not: they are the ultimate entities who manipulate rates. But for them it is a matter of "policy." As such they are desperate to throw anyone under the bus, as long as public attention is redirected from them.

So where will the first arrests come? Why the world's biggest bank of course.

The source familiar with the regulatory investigation in Europe said two traders who have been suspended from Deutsche Bank were among those being investigated. A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment.

Then, once DB is down and out, next it will be a turn to not only break up of the IR derivative trading cabal in Geneva, which Zero Hedge exposed first, but also extract a solid fee from the Swiss banks in the process.

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that regulators were looking at suspected communication among four traders who had worked at Barclays, Credit Agricole, HSBC and Deutsche Bank.

And so the tide turns, as banks, all of which should have ended up as bailed out utilities in the aftermath of the Lehman collapse, will now be forced to fork over billions in cash to the same governments and administrations that bailed them out in the first place, under the guise of civil and criminal penalty disgorgement in what will almost certainly end up as the biggest financial settlement in history, one which will leave most of the world's banks sorely undercapitalized and force the Basel implementation of various capital requirements to be scrapped indefinitely.

But for now, the public will get its circus (if not corn bread: its price is about to shoot right to the moon courtesy of prayer not being a viable strategy when it comes to procuring rain... or central bank intervention) courtesy of an imminent procession of perp walks. We, for one, having waited nearly 4 years for just this, can't wait.

Punishing Protest, Policing Dissent: What is the Justice System For?

Sunday, February 12, 2012 by Common Dreams
by Erik Hoffner

This year promises to be another historic year of people calling for change worldwide. Citizens took to the streets for a wide variety of reasons, from the Wisconsin Capitol to D.C., which hosted many actions last year including the highly visible civil disobedience of activists seeking to halt the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. The resulting mass arrests, totaling over 1,200 by early September, surely played a large role in President Obama’s decision to delay approval of that climate- and water supply-threatening project.

The climate justice movement also experienced a low point this year, though, when its most visible young leader, Tim DeChristopher, was sentenced to two years in prison for disrupting a Federal oil and gas lease auction by peaceful means. Even though the auction was later shown to be illegal, DeChristopher’s case proceeded in a manner that made it clear that the government’s prosecutor sought to make an example of an activist who showed no remorse.

For his part, Tim saw it as a necessary action to protect his future from runaway climate change, and seemed ready to prove that his movement is unafraid of such retribution when he refused to apologize or take a plea deal. As he told Terry Tempest Williams in Orion recently, “…it’s important to make sure that the government doesn’t win in their quest to intimidate people…They’re trying to make an example out of me to scare other people into obedience.” The punishing of protest is not unusual, and can result in long-term victories for those targeted, but that didn’t comfort Patrick Shea, DeChristopher’s lawyer, who said in a recent post that he’d witnessed “a miscarriage of justice, fairness, and what I believed America stood for.”

Occupiers, though, have racked up many more detentions, with 6,526 arrested in 110 U.S. cities so far, according to OccupyArrests.com. This wave of action and reaction has kept National Lawyers Guild (NLG) chapters and members very busy working to protect demonstrators’ constitutional rights. Founded 75 years ago to use the law to advance social justice and support progressive social movements, NLG coordinates attorneys, legal workers and law students, and provides legal briefing, case law research, legal strategy and tactical advice to activists. Over the past several months, its members have filed constitutional rights challenges, represented protesters in criminal court, trained and acted as Legal Observers®, and often provided ‘round-the-clock legal advice to Occupy encampments.

Their director, Heidi Boghosian, told me that guild members “…have probably pulled more all-nighters in the past few months than they did in all of college. But we hope that the Occupy movement continues, in as many creative incarnations as possible. For most of us, this kind of grassroots activism is what we live for.”

So I asked Boghosian this weekend how her view of the hierarchy of governmental threats to the exercise of political speech described in her 2007 book, Punishing Protest, has changed. She responded that two new significant trends are evident: “One, the use of high-technology and sophisticated military equipment, and two, cooperation between law enforcement and the private business sector, especially with regard to surveillance/spying and controlling media access to police actions.”

In some cities, such as New York, she said, “police are scanning irises of arrestees and are detaining those who refuse to be scanned. The stated purpose of the scans is to avoid mis-identifications in court, but this unregulated taking from those arrested for engaging in free speech activities is ominous; it would not be surprising if a database is being amassed of iris scans of political activists.”

In addition to police in Washington, D.C. using a truck with an infrared scanner to determine if individuals were sleeping at McPherson Square after they cleared tents from the Occupy encampment, other high-tech threats exist: “The federal government and local police agencies are using Predator drones with increasing frequency to spy on suspects domestically. The drones are equipped with high-resolution cameras, heat sensors and radar—it does not take much stretch of the imagination to see how the drones can be adapted for spying on political activists. These aircraft are capable of flying for up to 20 hours, making them more powerful than police airplanes or helicopters.”

Beside the high-tech threats, local governments preparing for large-scale protests before the political conventions are bolstering their standard toolbox with military equipment such as armed tanks. “The Tampa City Council voted to spend part of the federal grant money for the 2012 Republican National Convention— $50 million – for police “upgrades,” including a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle to supplement two older armored vehicles the city purchased through a military surplus program,” Boghosian said.

“Partnerships between law enforcement and corporations, including the news media, are cropping up with increasing frequency,” she continued. “Routinely, police shut down entire city blocks sweeping up everyone in sight, and control or prohibit credentialed journalists’ access during the process. That happened in New York when members of the press were kept away from a middle-of-the-night closing of Zuccotti Park, and in Los Angeles in late November when the LAPD shut down Occupy Los Angeles.” Boghosian noted in this case that, “Reports indicated that television news helicopters stopped sending images of officers marching toward City Hall because the news station entered into an agreement with the LAPD to not reveal their plans. The police imposed an air space blackout forbidding all but law enforcement helicopters to film above Solidarity Park.”

How much is the government reaction to Occupy changing how dissent is policed, I wondered? Boghosian answered that police have access to technology to monitor protesters in ways not previously possible. Besides facial recognition, Internet data mining, and even drones, “…a high technology facility is planned for lower Manhattan, where Wall Street businesses will cooperate with the New York Police Department in spying on citizens. NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly expressed the department’s commitment to implementing a security plan that will include a centralized coordination center with space for full-time representation from Goldman Sachs and other corporate partners.”

Then there’s the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which issued a subpoena asking for three months of information from a Twitter account of a person arrested in the ‘trap-and-arrest’ of Occupy Wall Street marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge. The defense attorney, NLG member Martin Stolar, filed a motion to quash the subpoena contending that it was overbroad, was issued for an improper purpose, and constituted an abuse of the court process. He also wrote that the range of information requested suggested that the DA might be using the subpoena for investigative purposes rather than to provide evidence to uphold a charge of disorderly conduct.

Police also dealt a blow to using new media to cover protest actions when they raided the Brooklyn studio of  Globalrevolution.tv, a website that aggregates live streaming content on the Occupy movement and arrested six of its volunteers. “Police had delivered a notice to vacate prior to the raid. Authorities claimed that the conditions in the space were perilous to life,” Boghosian noted drily.

Combine these developments with the new National Defense Authorization Act, (a broad and likely unconstitutional new law described by Glenn Greenwald as “…the first time indefinite detention has been enshrined in law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s,”) and one sees a broad and robust reaction to what Time magazine dubbed “the year of the protester.”

To the NLG’s Boghosian, not only is the NDAA unconstitutional, but also immoral and inhumane. The provisions on indefinite detention clearly violate due process and it overall “turns international humanitarian law on its head by mocking the concept that prisoners of war may be detained only until the end of hostilities,” she said. “As propaganda about radical Islam replace communism in the United States government’s rubric of fear, the executive branch abrogates any semblance of democracy. It was important that Chris Hedges brough this legal challenge to hold our leaders accountable and to propel critical issues into the public forum. I hope that he has a chance at prevailing and urge more citizens to bring such challenges to unlawful government actions. They may not like to let on, but judges read the newspapers. The silver lining in this is that the NDAA formalizes the many illegal practices already occurring, allowing formal challenges to be brought against them.”

From the multiple Occupy encampments to the climate camps on mountaintops in Appalachia to the one outside the courthouse in Utah where Tim DeChristopher took his defiant stand, all of the developments in how dissent is policed forces one to wonder whether the U.S. Justice System is actually about justice. Louis Wolcher, Professor of Law at University of Washington School of Law, told me that the term ‘justice system’ actually “…conflates law with justice, whereas the word justice means far more than law, as does the word ethics.” NLG’s Boghosian added that justice is also about politics, in that politics trumps justice and laws in most cases. “It takes a brave judge, and morally courageous lawyers, to stand up and make the just and legal decision in the face of the dominant political paradigm.”

What the justice system is actually for is a huge question, one that must be answered by the legions of activists, lawyers, and citizens who want to ensure a more transparent, just, equitable, and sustainable society. In the absence of such a response, the exercise of free speech in the U.S. will be increasingly constrained.

Occupy Wall Street's Livestream Operators Arrested

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 by The Atlantic Wire

by Adam Martin 

 

Occupy Wall Street is in the middle of one of its day-long marches in New York Tuesday, protesting the National Defense Authorization Act, but for those following along on the Global Revolution livestream (located in the column on the right--jef), the real action is happening in the broadcast studio itself. That's because police have apparently just raided the Brooklyn studio of Globalrevolution.tv and taken some of the project's key volunteers into custody.

The raid Tuesday follows a notice to vacate that police delivered to the Bushwick studio on Monday night. Victoria Sobel, a Global Revolution volunteer, said Vlad Teichberg and a guy named Spike, both of whom maintain the live feed aggregator, had been taken into custody by police, along with four or five others.

In Manhattan, about 100 Occupy protesters (according to Animal New York's Twitter) marched to the offices of New York senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, where they told stories and made impassioned cases for the wrongness of the NDAA. They plan a final rally at Grand Central station at 5 p.m., which should make for some fun interactions with hurried commuters. Lots of people were watching the proceedings on live feeds operated by Globalrevolution.tv, but now that site has stopped broadcasting the New York protest and is showing footage of Occupy Maui.

If you were following along earlier today, you may have been startled at about 1:45 p.m. to see the live feed cut away from the street-level action and to the face of Vlad Teichberg, one of the main organizers of Global Revolution. The new shot showed a large, graffittied space where Teichberg and a couple of colleagues were confronting a man they identified as the landlord, who had apparently broken in their door. They put the camera on him, he threatened to call the police, they said he had no right to come into the space by force, and he eventually left.

But Sobel said that was just the start of the day's conflict. Shortly after the confrontation, the police arrived. "Within the past hour, the police came in and removed people that were inside the studio," she said. "I believe the police just began knocking on the door and saying they would kick the door down and saying they would arrest people on the spot." The Global Revolution studio is now locked, Sobel said. The live feed has finished its Hawaiian broadcast and is playing a pre-recorded video. "The message is that even if they take the space, the [broadcast] will continue to be maintained," Sobel said. But right now, it seems to be out of commission.

Police and buildings department officials had served the Buswhick, Brooklyn space with notices to vacate on Monday night, declaring it "imminently perilous to life." The blog A Great Big City picked up this photo of the notice to vacate from the studio from the Twitter stream of Glass Bead Collective:

There is a handful of live streams that regularly cover Occupy events, such as Tim Pool's The Other 99 and Spencer Mills's OakFoSho. But Global Revolution is considered the main channel. It's an aggregator of live streams worldwide, borne of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park. And this wouldn't be the first time the headquarters had moved.

In an Oct. 4 profile, The New Yorker's Andrew Marantz wrote: "For the first few weeks of the protest, Global Revolution operated from under a tarp in Zuccotti Park, using wireless hot spots. Two weeks ago, the group, frustrated with the amount of equipment they were losing to theft and rain, moved to NoHo." Global Revolution operated from a building at Lafayette and Bleeker while journalists such as New York's John Heilemann and Wired's Sean Captain profiled it. Heilemann's Nov. 27 piece described the 39-year-old Teichberg as "so jacked in to the electronic grid that he comes across like a character out of Neuromancer."

By Dec. 11,, when The New York Times wrote about the rise of live feeds in publicizing the Occupy protests, the Global Rev. headquarters had moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Midnight Raid in Austin

All Trick No Treat

by GREG MOSES

 

If last Friday you could pull yourself from the temptation of ordering a $17 risotto among jam-packed downtown luncheoneers, then you could walk a little further to the west side of Austin City Hall and catch a free viewing of the noon sun as it stopped to warm a heap of oversized sleeping bags right outside the picture window of city council chambers.

Probably the architect who west-walled the council room in glass was suggesting something about democracy, so you wondered for a minute how that impromptu pile of cozy bedding looked from inside and how long the sight would be tolerated.  Out on the west plaza meanwhile a well-bred dog concentrated on the art of warming, stretching its front legs out in such a way as to flatten its tummy across the sun-stained stone, stretching, and coughing just a little bit.

Of course it sounds too perfect that the only other thing you heard was the quiet melody of guitar strings being finger-picked by a youngish man whose presence, style, and musicality seemed to account for the dog’s single-minded attention to relaxation.

Now at what point exactly on this fourth weekend of Occupy Austin did the Austin Police swoop down to scoop up all these sleeping bags and dump them at some pre-authorized location?  By Sunday afternoon a shoeless young woman will be trying to explain it all, pointing to her feet and saying yes, that’s why she has no shoes, because they were lost in the sleeping bag raid.

And sure enough on Sunday afternoon when you walk back around to check out the view near “democracy window” there is nothing but bare stone.

Rounding the corner to the south plaza on Friday, you saw a dozen folks sitting in various places upon the amphitheater to your upper left and another dozen people gathered in the plaza before you.  Beyond the plaza, and around the sidewalks, perhaps another dozen sat, walked, or stood.   Three dozen in all, up, down, and around.

A shirtless man with a bicycle mocked you on Friday for gaping at the scene, then turned his attention to two middle aged men with really cool bikes who were also just looking at things.

Where the east steps of the amphitheater met the plaza was an empty metal bookshelf labeled “Free Library,” not too far from a line-up of books sunning themselves on a warm block of stone.  Sitting also on the stone was a young woman deep into the art of making a sign from poster-board and magic marker.

“The police took the bookshelf, too,” explains the barefoot woman on Sunday.  “I think they called it a permanent fixture.”

On Friday also you recall making notes about the food table that was serving free lunch on the lower deck of the amphitheater.  “Mom’s Work” said a sign behind the table as food was being served by a healthy looking blonde.
“They didn’t come for the food table until midnight Saturday,” the barefoot woman explains on Sunday.  “There was a new rule about no food from 10 pm to 6 am, so we were kinda giddy about it when they didn’t come for the table at 10.  But the rule didn’t go into effect until Sunday, so that’s why they waited.”

Although the food-table arrests were not the first arrests for Occupy Austin, they were the first to be met with a unified and organized response.  As the barefoot woman was informing me on Sunday about the overnight arrests, she wondered how she was going to march barefooted from city hall to the county jail.

Thinking back on Friday, you got the impression that the occupation camp was mostly glowing on the question of police relations.  The Austin Police Chief had come to Thursday night’s General Assembly with some encouraging words and promises.  Folks were chatting Friday about how Austin was an exception to the police attacks that had rocked other occupations.

Not that police had been exactly kindly up to the fourth weekend of Occupy Austin.  For example, the “flag man” of the movement who wore a Veteran’s Administration tag around his neck and who camped out near the front sidewalk with an American flag said the cops warned him once that if he put his head down to sleep they would arrest him.  After 36 hours of sleepless occupation he walked several miles to the VA facility before he felt safe enough to close his eyes.

After the food-table take-down, the police came back.

“Oh I don’t remember exactly what time it was, maybe between two and four in the morning,” says a trusted witness.

“One group of cops lined up at the top of the amphitheater.”

“No, there were two lines of cops at the top of the amphitheater,” says a friend.

“And they had another line of cops over there,” says the trusted witness, pointing to the sidewalk along the east side of the city hall plaza.

The cops swept southward down the amphitheater and westward across the plaza.

“It was ridiculous, because we have been moving to that side two or three times a week so that they could power-wash the plaza and amphitheater,” chimes in the friend.   “Then last night they also changed the order of the power washing.  Usually they wash the amphitheater first so that it has a chance to dry first and we can go back to sleep.  But last night they washed the amphitheater last and we had the feeling they did it on purpose so that we would have wet spaces to sleep on.”

By the time the police intimidations were over with, nearly 40 people had been arrested.  They were being bailed out all day Sunday, and at 4 pm it was time to redouble the support group that was assembled at the door of the county jail.

After a brief double-check via an iPhone map, organizers led 60 marchers north, up Guadalupe, from city hall to the county jail.  Our barefooted marcher carried a sign taller than her that read: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better, it’s not.” Signed by, “The Lorax.”  Next time I will see her, she will be educating a television reporter who doesn’t appear shoeless to me.

“Shame on APD, Occupiers must go free!” chant some 60 marchers as they step past prime retailers and polished tour buses.  “It’s the War Economy,” declares one protest sign as marchers pass a couple of banks.

Small cars honk friendly notes as they pass us going south.  Then as the last stragglers of the march finish crossing Fifth Street a big white gas-guzzling combo SUV pickup monstrosity lays on its horn and gas at the same time, nearly threatening to run ‘em down.

After marchers pass the John Henry Faulk city library and take a turn around Wooldridge Park, they are greeted with cheers from the branch occupation at the county jail.  The merged rally is easily 150 strong.  In this hour of triumph, the arrests themselves have energized the movement to a new plateau of solidarity and determination.

“Free Speech Dies, [The Police Chief] Lies,” chant the occupiers.  They recite the First Amendment in unison.

The Bail and Jail Magnet for the occupation announces that $400 has just been posted for two more releases, a third release is pending after that, and a supporter has donated pizza!  Boxes of pizza are stacked five high on a bench.

“This is what Democracy looks like,” chants the crowd as a lead organizer points to them.  “This is what Hypocrisy looks like,” they chant as he point to the jail house door.  All this is going out via live stream on the occupation’s trusty laptop, which has been marched up here, too.

“What happens when people violate your constitutional rights?” asks an organizer.  “Do they get arrested?”
“They get elected!” answers a backbencher, cackling.

At that point the door to the county jail opens up and out come three jail trustees in blue scrubs, walking a dog, supervised by a uniformed deputy.  The four of them take the dog to a grassy patch where he knows just what to do.

Two television crews break down and return home.  A third crew arrives with a satellite truck.  The air is swooning with the smell of hand-rolled tobacco.

Then we see our first liberation.  Out from the glass doors of the jail strides a young man of stocky build, green t-shirt, desert camo pants, black bandana tied around his neck, and topped with a broad, flat Mohawk.  He looks good to us, and you can tell we look good to him.  He saunters toward the back benches where the jail veterans are sharing stories.  Someone passes him a Coke.

Another stocky young man about this time is talking to the live stream about getting in and out of jail.  Inside, they told him there were too many people in jail.  He said he told them that’s an easy problem to fix.  Just let the folks who didn’t do anything out.

When organizers report three more arrests back at city hall, I walk south to check it out.  At Wooldridge Park, three women have set up a table to give food, socks, undershorts, and t-shirts to a line that is already 60 men long.  A man is asking for extra socks that he can give to his girlfriend.  Down 9^th St. near the Hirshfeld-Moore House I catch the back end of a Zombie march.  Then it’s past the Texas Observer on 7th, under the porch at Betsy’s Bar, and down a stretch of Lavaca that stinks like puke and grease.  At an upscale hotel, valets are lining up a Prius, an Audi, and a BMW.

“Yes, two guys got arrested here about ten minutes ago,” is what I hear from several people back at city hall.  “They were fighting.  Then while they were being arrested, another guy kept talking to the cops and wouldn’t shut up, so they arrested him too.”

It’s close to 6 pm Sunday and the fourth weekend of Occupy Austin is coming to a close.  The last jail release won’t be live streamed until 9:22 pm.  Meanwhile Bob Jensen is leading a few folks to the West side of city hall for a teach-in on toxic economics.

Occupiers on the plaza are already debating the meaning of today’s arrests and planning further actions to seek divestment of the city from Bank of America.  Everybody is thinking about the next move.

23 ‘Occupy Dallas’ protesters arrested for blocking Chase bank

The cops said they wouldn't arrest anyone if they complied and some of us didn't comply> I don't agree with the direction we seem to be taking. I will still protest with them, but there have been some things that have happened that make me really uncomfortable, particularly the last paragraph of the story.

By Eric W. Dolan - Raw Story
Monday, October 24, 2011

A group of “Occupy Dallas” protesters were arrested on Monday afternoon during a demonstration in front of a Chase Bank branch.

Twenty-three people were arrested for criminal trespassing after blocking customers from entering the bank, according to NBC DFW.

Dallas officers told the protesters that they would not be arrested if they complied with orders to remove themselves from the entrance. But the protesters locked arms and refused to leave.

Chase Bank has been targeted by “Occupy” protests around the country. The bank fired around 14,000 workers after a government bailout totaling $94.7 billion.

“We need bodies on the ground today,” the group said on its Facebook page before the demonstration. “We want to send a message to these banks. You destroyed our economy, paid off politicians to help you steal our tax dollars and used them to increase your personal profits while laying off thousands of American workers.”

The protesters are currently camped out at Dallas’ City Hall Park. They began their demonstration October 6 in Pioneer Plaza, but decided to relocate after encountering permit troubles with members of the city council.

“Occupy Dallas” organizers told CBS 11 News they would impose a 10pm curfew and check the identification of those at the demonstration after a 14-year-old girl told police she had engaged in sexual activity with several people.

Citibank Customers Arrested For Trying to Close Their Accounts

Nov 5 is "Close Your Bank Account Day"