If you’ve got a mortgage, you probably assume that the folks receiving your monthly payments are the ones holding your deed.

For years, homeowners have been battling Wall Street in an attempt to recover some portion of their massive losses from the housing Ponzi scheme. But progress has been slow, as they have been outgunned and out-spent by the banking titans.

Mortgage debt overhang from the housing bust has meant lack of middle-class spending power and consumer demand, preventing the economy from growing.

A flood of foreclosures in neighborhoods, cities and towns can cause everyone’s real estate equity to plunge.

Central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record-low interest rates.

Primary elections originated in the American progressive movement and were intended to take the power of candidate nomination away from party leaders and deliver it to the people.

Funding infrastructure through bonds doubles the price or worse. Costs can be cut in half by funding through the state’s own bank.

The movement to break away from Wall Street and form publicly-owned banks continues to gain momentum. But enthusiasts are deterred by claims that a state-owned bank would violate constitutional prohibitions against “lending the credit of the state.”

Governor Jerry Brown is aggressively pushing a California state constitutional amendment requiring budget surpluses to be used to pay down municipal debt and create an emergency “rainy day” fund, in anticipation of the next economic crisis.

Ellen’s guest this week is renowned banking guru Nomi Prins. Nomi discloses the longstanding personal and political ties between Washington and Wall Street that have enabled the concentration of global wealth into the hands of a few. (Audio Length 58:46).

One of the biggest banker frauds on the planet is the rate rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR. Hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of interest rates are set off of LIBOR globally.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder has declared that the too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks are too big to prosecute. But an outraged California jury might have different ideas.

Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it.

Big banks have been wheeling and dealing in foreclosures, often illegally, to execute fraudulent takings of property or profiteering from servicing fees. But they may now be facing their Achilles Heel with challenges to their ownership by bold government leaders who want to stanch the bleeding of community economic health.

EU officials reached an historic agreement to create a single agency to handle failing banks. Attention has focused on the agreement involving the single resolution mechanism (SRM). But the real story is the heightened threat of a deal that now authorizes both bailouts and “bail-ins” – the confiscation of depositor funds.

Greg Palast is skilled at peering behind the rhetoric. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren’s support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs – both the underbanked and the US Postal Service itself.