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As Current TV's John Fugelsang, filling in for Eliot Spitzer this week reminded us, when average citizens break the law we have to pay fines that might actually act as a deterrent or face jail time and when these bankers and Wall Street commit crimes, they get a slap on the wrist compared to the profit they already extracted and give up their bonuses.

As John noted, you don't go to prison for Wall Street crimes, but you can't say the same for those protesting Wall Street. And he's right, if they cracked down on these bankers stealing the same way they have park zoning laws, there would be no need for an Occupy Wall Street movement.

Barclays to pay more than $450 million in interest-rate settlement:

Barclays Bank PLC has agreed to pay more than $450 million to settle charges it attempted to manipulate key interest rates.

The London-based investment bank announced settlements with the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the British Financial Services Authority.

Investigators found the bank manipulated the London InterBank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or EURIBOR, benchmark interest rates used in the world's financial markets. [...]

Under the settlements, Barclays would pay the Justice Department a $160-million penalty and cooperate with its ongoing investigation to avoid prosecution. The bank would pay the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission $200 million, with the rest going to the British Financial Services Authority.

In a statement, Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond said he and other top executives would forgo bonuses this year.

“The events which gave rise to today’s resolutions relate to past actions which fell well short of the standards to which Barclays aspires in the conduct of its business," Diamond said. "When we identified those issues, we took prompt action to fix them and cooperated extensively and proactively with the authorities. Nothing is more important to me than having a strong culture at Barclays; I am sorry that some people acted in a manner not consistent with our culture and values."

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Earlier in the day on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell allowed Sen. Roy Blunt to come on the air and tell this whopper:

‘Romney’s Man In Congress’ Falsely Blames Obamacare For High Student Loan Rates:

If Congress doesn’t act, the interest rates on government-backed student loan will jump in July, so President Obama has made a big push this week to prevent that from happening. Republicans have thus far held up the extension, though presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney called for preserving the lower rates Monday.

But Romney’s “man in Congress,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), seems to misunderstand the issue. In an interview on MSNBC this afternoon, Blunt blamed high student loan rates on the Affordable Care Act [...]

In fact, the rate was set back in 2007, when President Bush signed a Democratic-backed law to lower the rate from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. That law expires on July 1 of this year, and the lower rates end along with it. The Affordable Care Act and President Obama are entirely irrelevant.

Blunt is likely thinking of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), a bill that was attached to the Affordable Care Act. And while it did not affect loan rates, it did remove banker middlemen from the student loan process, which will save taxpayers millions of dollars.

Mitchell gave Blunt a complete pass when he made that statement during her show, and Ed Schultz was ready to call him out for lying before he even got on the air this evening on MSNBC. He played part of the interview on his radio show shortly after it aired and vowed to do more reporting on it during the evening, which is exactly what he did in the segment above. Rep. George Miller joined Ed to discuss Blunt's statement to Andrea Mitchell and how the Republicans are proposing to pay for the reduced interest rates now.

Here's more on that from Ed Kilgore -- House GOP Tries New Gambit on Student Loans:

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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell invited Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke to respond to Rush Limbaugh's latest attack on her, this time for daring send out a tweet on the fact that interest rates are going to to up on student loans if Congress fails to act shortly. Fluke was gracious as usual and discussed how ridiculous it was to accuse her of some kind of "coordinated" attack with the Obama administration.

As she noted, if she wants to know what the President is doing, she finds out like most of the rest of us and uses Google. Fluke pointed out that the changes were not doing to directly affect her, but they would greatly impact incoming students and fellow students she interacts with daily, who really cannot afford the rate hikes, which might make the cost of going to college prohibitive for those just on the edge of being able to afford it right now.

Here's more from the Huffington Post on Limbaugh's latest attack -- Rush Limbaugh Attacks Sandra Fluke Again (AUDIO) :

Rush Limbaugh went after Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke again on Tuesday for what he called "coordinating" with President Obama to "scare students about the interest rates on their loans."

During his Tuesday radio show, Limbaugh read a tweet Fluke sent, which said, "#DontDoubleMyRate. Many students will see the interest rate on Fed #StudentLoans increase if Congress doesn't act by 7/1."

Limbaugh called Fluke's tweet a coincidence since she allegedly sent it thirty minutes before Obama told students at the University of North Carolina that their federal student loans will double if Congress doesn't act by July 1.

Limbaugh laid into the law student, saying that "contraception isn't enough" and that "some people want their education paid for by other people too." He also seemingly mocked Fluke as the person his listeners all knew for "courageously and bravely fighting for contraception at Georgetown and wherever else it can be provided at no charge."

I guess we can add college students and their parents to the list of those the Republicans and Rush Limbaugh are determined to help alienate before the upcoming election. John Boehner's spin on the House Republicans refusing to keep the loan rates low -- it's all the Democrats' fault of course.

Steve Benen did a great job of breaking that down here -- The problem with Boehner's logic:

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More fearmongering on the Super Committee failing to reach a deal to avoid the automatic triggered cuts that will come if the committee can't reach agreement soon. If you knew nothing about what the Republicans latest offer was and were just watching the segment above, you'd think both sides were being terribly unreasonable and wondering why, oh why that silly John Kerry won't give in and let the Republicans have what they want and that the Democrats had been offered some sort of "balanced" deal.

From Dave Dayden over at FDL News Desk, here's what the Republicans were offering today -- Republican’s Latest Super Committee Offer is a 181:1 Ratio of Spending Cuts to Tax Increases.

Whoo boy that's some real balance there. Why won't those silly Democrats agree to that very "serious" plan? I can't imagine. Here's more from DDay.

Republicans apparently just submitted a last-ditch effort to get agreement on the Super Committee. It was a $545 billion proposal, less than half of the minimum requirement to avoid all of the automatic trigger cuts. And it included $3 billion in tax increases.

For those of you scoring at home, that’s a ratio of about 181:1.

Democrats rejected it.

It’s almost getting fun to watch the catfood commission fail so thoroughly. If we’re already submitting proposals of less than half the minimum requirement, then there’s nothing left to fear from this thing. It’s also good news that the unbalanced proposal was rejected, because that probably included a lot of cuts already offered in past proposals by Democrats.

It will be fun to watch Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and David Walker and Maya MacGuineas and all the rest whine and cry next week when this thing gets a real Viking funeral. What they know, but won’t tell you, is that simply doing nothing would lead to $7.1 trillion in deficit reduction. In other words, just offsetting any changes to current law will accomplish about twice as much as their alleged goal for cutting deficits. They won’t tell you this because it comes primarily from letting tax cuts expire. [...]

The point is not to let all of this happen; the point is not even to pay for all the fixes to this, necessarily. The point is to show that the medium term budget is ALREADY in primary balance, and that just relatively following that guide path – even while allowing for targeted measures to improve the economy – is completely sufficient, rather than cutting everyone’s Social Security and Medicare benefits.

181:1, and host Erin Burnett and her panel of Jim Bianco, John Avlon and David Gergen were allowing the viewers of CNN to think the Democrats were being offered anything they should have taken seriously. We need to just let these Bush tax cuts expire and put an end to this saber rattling over austerity measures, but the Villagers in the corporate media are desperate to continue to push the narrative that there are no solutions for this other than inflicting pain on the majority of the electorate rather than ask the richest among us to pay any more taxes.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Paul Krugman and Douglas Holtz Eakin squared off on the PBS Newshour on whether Ben Bernake and the Fed have been doing enough to keep our economy from running off into a ditch. As of now it looks like all Bernanke is worried about is keeping interest rates down and as Paul said "Do we have to have a whole Great Depression to get the Fed moving?" I hope not but Bernanke's lack of action is making me wonder as well.

Paul has more in his column at the NYT's here -- Invisible Cavalry To The Rescue!. Right now I share his lack of optimism. The ones who could actually do something to get the United States economy back on track all look like they couldn't care less if they turn us into a third world country whether it be the Fed or the Congress.

JEFFREY BROWN: Paul Krugman, I will start with you. You wrote in your column today, this isn't a recovery in any way that matters. So, did you sense today that Ben Bernanke agrees and is taking the right steps?

PAUL KRUGMAN, columnist, The New York Times: Well, he may agree, but he's not taking the right steps. I mean, there was no sense of urgency in his talk. Yes, he said we will do something if the situation warrants. But here we are. You know, this is -- we're now 32 months into this slump. Unemployment is disastrously high. Growth, we -- the economy needs to grow about 2.5 percent annual rate just to keep unemployment from rising. It's not doing that.

What would it take to justify action? So, you know, it was a good signal that he is saying, you know, the Fed is kind of, sort of willing to do something, maybe, which is better than previous statements. But, if this isn't a situation that warrants action now, what would be that kind of situation? Do we have to have a whole Great Depression to get the Fed moving?

JEFFREY BROWN: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, what did you hear from the Fed today?

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, former Congressional Budget Office director: Well, there was a little bit in there for everybody. He said, we recognize the economy's struggling, and thus tried to make sure people didn't think the Fed was out of touch. He told those who were worried about the economy going down into double dip that they had things they could do, and he outlined them.

And then, at the end, he told the people worried about inflation, believe it or not, look, we're not promising higher inflation in the United States. We're not going on record for that. So, I thought it was a talk carefully designed to appeal to lots of audiences.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, carefully designed, but what about the state of the economy that Paul Krugman sees as in dire straits, needing more?

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN: The economy is not in good shape. And I think, about that, there ought to be great agreement. But the key is that the Fed has done all it can do. It did a tremendous job in propping up the economy during the crisis. It is now badly extended. The keys now are that we have an economy that is growing. It's been growing for about a year, but it is growing too slowly. We ought to rethink this, not as a crisis, sort of stimulus issue, but one where we have got to concentrate on long-term growth and do all the things to make the economy grow faster.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, well, that gets to the nub of the argument here, Paul Krugman. What should the Fed do now? What do you want to see it do?

PAUL KRUGMAN: I think it should be throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the problem. I mean, Doug is saying that there's -- the Fed has done all it can do. That's not what the Fed says. The Fed says it has ammunition; it continues to have the ability to act. So, we should take them at their word and see them actually act. They can do purchases of long-term bonds. They can raise their inflation target, which, you know, Ben Bernanke, when he was a Princeton economics professor, advocated for Japan when it was in a similar situation.

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Ed Schultz talks to Sen. Bernie Sanders about his opposition to Ben Bernanke being confirmed for another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Sen. Sanders placed a hold on Bernanke's confirmation back in December and he reiterates some of the points he made in his press release at that time.

December 2, 2009

WASHINGTON, December 2 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

“The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders said. “What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.”

As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.

He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not.

He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not.

He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not.

“The American people want a new direction on Wall Street and at the Fed. They do not want as chairman someone who has been part of the problem and who has been responsible for many of the enormous difficulties that we are now experiencing,” Sanders said. “It’s time for a change at the Fed.” Read on...

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We need a whole lot more Bernies out there.

h/t Sen. Sanders