Letting the Bank Robber Fix the Bank's Books
If Congress passes the bailout it will be demonstrating an extraordinary belief in the power of redemption. In the past, I have noted the fact that Secretary Paulson's failure to recognize the housing bubble, and the economic and financial havoc that would be created by its inevitable collapse, contributed to the disaster we now face.
It turns out that Secretary Paulson played an even more direct role in bringing down our financial system. The New York Times has a superbly timed piece reporting on how a 2004 change in an SEC rule allowed Bear Stearns, Lehman, and the other major investment banks to leverage themselves to unprecedented levels. Among the highlights of the story is the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was one of the main people pushing for this change in SEC rules.
It is remarkable that Congress would be willing to give Secretary Paulson such enormous power in running this bailout given his advocacy of rule changes that played such an important role in this financial disaster, and the extent to which he personally profited from these changes. This would be like giving the bank robber who cleaned out the vaults the opportunity to set the banks finances in order -- and letting him keep the loot. Let's hear it for second chances!
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I still just can't believe the Democrats are letting Paulson--who got it wrong--run the show, and it's the Republicans (for the most part) who are pushing back.
I find I'm becoming a two-issue voter this election: FISA and the bailout. Sure makes my life easier (except for Harkin who voted against FISA and for the bailout). I'll vote for Obama, because the alternative is unthinkable, but the others can go to h*ll.
This CHARADE is a nothing more than a scorched earth looting of the coffers of the Republic
as a last act of knee capping loyalty to the masters of war
by the same folks who brought
supply side, yellow cake, axis of evil, mushroom cloud, jihad, pre-emptive war of liberation, flowering of democracy, McCain's mullatto baby, Abu Grahib, Guantanamo, Florida re-count, "can't remember", don't recall" prosperity to a very select demographic. and it is designed to bankrupt and hamstring the incumbent Democratic majority
As Ron Reagan wrote in Esquire WAY BACK in 2004
"When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush’s economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You’re the help. When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you’ll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet."
PS,… received a VISA platinum solicitation in the mail YESTERDAY.
Corruptlican - economic terrorist.
For political reasons it is absolutely necessary to end this administration on a complete failure and let it lead the country into a deep recession. Americans will not learn the lessons necessary to reform this country from the ground up without a very painful lesson. I say, let them have the money. And then let everybody watch it fail. And then let people vote.
Wow. Rather than a chicken in every pot, you'll be offering a wheelbarrow for every family--to haul their worthless marks, er dollars, to the store to buy week old bread. There must be a better way than to inflict Depression era punishment on the working people who built this country while the plutocrats vacation on Ibiza?
Well said, "Rule."
This situation reminds me of the old Lone Ranger joke, with its punch-line "whaddaya mean 'we,' paleface?"
I think that both the international business community and the American people both deserve much better than this. What we have right now is the product of lawlessness: the product of High Crime. And, the product of the steadfast refusal to impeach, to prosecute those crimes.
Every dime-store detective novel ends the same way: "crime doesn't pay." No, it doesn't. Money can't really be made out of thin air.
But... the military industrial complex needed for it to be so. They needed, and they continue to need, a top-secret bottomless piggy bank. And Senators and Congressmen who could be easily bought (and who would remain in office for thirty, forty, or more years until they literally dropped dead).
Is "impeachment still off the table," Madame Speaker? Is the Supreme Law of the Land still a "blee-blee piece of paper?"
The 300+ million Plaintiffs in this country simply expect, and require: "equal protection... Under The Law." (And that means you, "paleface.")
Nouriel Roubini | Oct 3, 2008
It is now clear that the US financial system - and now even the system of financing of the corporate sector - is now in cardiac arrest and at a risk of a systemic financial meltdown. I don't use these words lightly but at this point we have reached step 12 of my February paper on "12 Steps to a Financial Disaster".
Yesterday Thursday a senior colleague in a major financial institution wrote me the following:
Situation Report: So far as I can tell by working the telephones this morning:
* LIBOR bid only, no offer.
* Commercial paper market shut down, little trading and no issuance.
* Corporations have no access to long or short term credit markets -- hence they face massive rollover problems.
* Brokers are increasingly not dealing with each other.
* Even the inter-bank market is ceasing up.
This cannot continue for more than a few days. This is the economic equivalent to cardiac arrest. Then we debated what is necessary to restart the system.
http://mercatoliberonews.blogspot.com/2008/10/financial-and-corporate-system-is-in.html
This scam or as I call it The Bank Robbers Reward Act of 2008 is not a fix, it is a give-away to ensure that the current crop of politicans get their campaign donations on time and in the amounts requested.
Giving away a country's assets to the wealthy has never really produced well-being in anyone other than the wealthy. . .the trickle down effect is just that, a trickle. Most Americans of modest mean get their "wealth" by working hard, working more, saving and with a bit of luck, a break. This Congress is a sad reminder of all the not so good our government has degenerated into:
To fix our economy, we need to help those who are struggling to just survive or who are on the brink of a disaster not of their making - I doubt Congress with help them as they have nothing but a vote to use as a weapon to weild power. I say anyone who votes to "give away" my hard earned money to the idiots who perpurpated this debackle should not be reelected to office come November.
A couple of questions I have, not being an economist:
Does this debacle not prove that demand drives the economy, that it is an immutable (?) Law of Economics and supply-side economics is the voodoo Bush the Elder called it (for about half a second)?
I remember back in the 80's when the Dow was about to reach 1000 (could that be right? It's what I remember . . . ), some "experts" were saying the market was grossly inflated, that the increase in stock values had nothing to do with improved performance, sales or profits or any of the "normal" measures of company value. Well, if the market was inflated then . . . how can anyone justify the value of stock for a firm like Bear Sterns (before the collapse) that was leveraged by a factor of 8 or 9 (as I understand it)? I believe I read that Bear Sterns, at the time they sank/were rescued, leveraged $16B with assets of $2B but the stock was at about $100 per share - how can that be? How could anyone have attached that kind of value to a company with a balance sheet so skewed?
If the whole market is inflated by that much, maybe it is best just to let the whole thing collapse, so we can pick up the pieces and build a new economy.
THANK YOU! Research the invention of the Federal Reserve. www.silverbearcafe.org
What we have is a failure of centralized, Keynesian economics. The New Deal was structed around the premise that the government could control the market. That it was left in the hands of a private cartel, The Federal Reserve (no, they are not beholden to Congress - they dumped another $630 Billion w/o congresses "approval" recently), is the real crime.
"Allow me to issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes its rules!" Amshell Rothschild.
The New Deal worked for a while. It was managed markets run-amok, corporatism...a softe form of fascism. It has steadily eroded to that, especially since the breakdown of Brenton-Woods in 1971 when we went from a production/savings/creditor nation to a debtor/consumer nation that went off our gold standard. Complete fiat currency from that point. gloom/boom/doom.
"do nothing" would have been what you suggest. Allow the market to correct. Get a recession, deep painful, but a year or so.
bailout = dumping more fiat currency into the problem that was created on fiat currency! this will create hyperinflation and a greater depression....destroying our currency!
why would they do that? well, that is for another post. in the meantime, www.vonmises.org www.campaignforliberty.com www.votepact.org are great places to research what true free markets are (and were before the Fed).
HR2755 Abolish the Fed.
The bail-out will be a rip-off it it's passed unless Paulson & all other 'bank robbers' have no say where bail-out money goes; but how do you keep the foxs off the farm & out of the woods in a capitalist economy? How about putting a bounty on Paulson & his ilk? We have too many bank robbers at large. Raise the bounty on Paulson & his ilk. Jail Paulson style thieves.
Dean, baby...
Stop pissing me off before coffee.
And keep up the good work.
No Banker Left Behind.
Exactly, it is time to get the fox out of the henhouse. And he is doing it in bright light!
Paulson certainly exacerbated the crisis by letting Lehman go bankrupt. There was not even an effort of a government bailout, assisted sell-off or nationalization. This can be read as: He got effectively rid of a direct rival of Goldman Sachs. Given any sort of rescue Lehman might have survived or remerged even in a few years..
Paulson asked for a bailout that provides banks (including Goldman Sachs?) to receive taxpayers money (in exchange for their most worthless assets of course, whether held to maturity or to eternity, they will not be worth more than zero) - but without giving the government control by nationalization. Nationalized banks might be sold off later to the highest bidder, once they are out of the woods. Paulson is certainly not going to let that happen to Goldman Sachs.
This really sound paranoid. But, sometimes they are, in fact, (also) after you.
"It is remarkable that Congress would be willing to give Secretary Paulson such enormous power in running this bailout given his advocacy of rule changes that played such an important role in this financial disaster"
What's remarkable about it? They seem hellbent on driving us off a cliff. Obama's treasury secretary will kowtow to Wall Street as well.
are you starting to see the light john?
www.votepact.org
What I find astonishing is that they're not trying harder to disguise the scam.
Why would they? What are you going to do about it?
Writing and complaining, but what else can the public do, as it seems we are being ignored. We are seeing the biggest rip off since 1919. We need to stop this madness. Any suggests, because they are going to pass this today, and all I can do is sit here and watch my children's future disappear.
We TRY to comment..I spoke with an "intern" in Henry Waxman's office...tried to leave a message on Mdm Pelosi's line (duh..voicemail was full)..
it's NOT just Paulson.this truly stared with Greenspan...my gawd..what was that arrogant little thug thinking? These guys are all imbred..maybe with blue blood..but inbred all the same..
from Robert Rubin, to Paulson so new CEO of Wachovia (formerly of both Treasury AND goldman sachs)..... jeezuz..it IS a corporateocracy...clear a rain...
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