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Extortion: After 16 banks caved in to White House demands to refund billions in losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one outlier remains unrepentant. Nomura Holdings refuses to succumb to the political shakedown. The Japanese bank's U.S. unit won't give in to extortionist regulators protecting Fannie/Freddie who claim it hoodwinked the toxic twins into buying pools of subprime mortgages, like it claimed Bank of America, JPMorgan and other U.S. banks did in the run-up to the mortgage crisis. The government demands $1 billion in damages. Nomura says it won't give a dime toward the $18 billion ransom the feds...

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore. "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition...

Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014 "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing. Back in 2006, as a...

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), Chairman of the Economic Growth Subcommittee, sent a harsh letter to Attorney General Holder Wednesday accusing the Department of Justice of abusing its power and intimidating banks through its "Operation Choke Point." In the letter, Issa and Jordan stated, "[t]he [House Oversight and Government Reform] Committee is concerned that both the goal and mechanisms of Operation Choke Point may constitute a serious mismanagement and abuse of the Department´s FIRREA [Financial Institution Reform and Recovery Act of 1989] authority." Breitbart News broke the