Anyone interested in learning about what is really happening during this financial crisis, needs to watch Bill Moyers' interview of William K. Black (broadcast on April 3rd, 2009). As most of us intuit, the financial crisis has been manufactured entirely by greed and fraud and this interview clearly and concisely exposes this process.
BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor at the conference here in New York to hear you say that this crisis we're going through, this economic and financial meltdown is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.BILL MOYERS: So you're suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: How do they get away with it? I mean, what about their own checks and balances in the company? What about their accounting divisions?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: All of those checks and balances report to the CEO, so if the CEO goes bad, all of the checks and balances are easily overcome. And the art form is not simply to defeat those internal controls, but to suborn them, to turn them into your greatest allies. And the bonus programs are exactly how you do that.
While the working class fights among itself -- blame the mortgage holders that "lived beyond their means," blame immigrants, blame the unions, blame blue collar workers, etc. -- the real criminals run free with trillions.
When will Americans wake up and hold the real criminals - Banksters - accountable for their actions, and pressure the government to enact systemic changes to prevent future abuses?
:-)
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People don't seem to get it. The powers that be pitted us against each other so we wouldn't go after them.
Yet, any discussion about the Fed is met with "tin foil" accusations.
The Federal Reserve is not a big conspiracy. Perhaps if you did not see Federal Reserve gnomes as secretly in control of the entire world, and hear them in every conversation, and read them in every article, such as here, as if they were being discussed, when they were not, obsessively trying to convince everybody that secret shareholders control the private Federal Reserve and caused the current crisis and all past crisis on past the Civil War, on purpose as part of their nefarious evil plot, people might not react like they do towards what you say.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
Many of the big banks were hoodwinked by the better cons - the ones who lived and worked on Main Street. Follow the money. The Main Street cons got almost all of it. In quantities that dwarf by gigantic amounts the puny bonuses of Wall Street bankers.
Does it really matter who ends up with the loan if the loan is bad? The repercussion vibrates all the way down the chain. The CEOs know what is going on- they are instrumental in policy making for their organization. Any fluctuation in the market value of stock warrants their attention as they are held accountable by the shareholders; believe me they know.
Since the 1980s the Democrats have been waning in power, so it is understandable that they have had to compromise in order to survive and stymy the full intent of the Republican revolution. Don't confuse that stalling action as an alliance with Republican efforts. Much of it was intended to blunt their full intent, which was no regulation at all and the total privatization of our society.
Nevertheless, you are right: the bankers do own the government. And there are solutions that would work, but our elected officials are too beholden to their corporate bosses to enact them.
On April 11th:
http://anewwayforward.org/demonstrations/
For more on the American response to the Great Heist, also see Paralytic Debt Poisoning:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-keiser/paralytic-debt-poisoning_b_181577.html
Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed)
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
I want to blame this whole mess on Reagan and the rise of the right wing back in the '80s. My reasoning goes as follows:
(1) Reagan (et. al.) convinced that Government Was The Problem - and got elected to government.
(2) Reagan (et. al.) started the deregulation craze.
(3) Once regulated business realized that there was more to gain from the lack of a watchdog than there was in a protected monopoly, they pushed congress (and the public dialog) for more deregulation.
(4) Deregulation works because there aren't too many crooks (yet.)
(5) Repeat [3] and [4] above. Over and over again. Until the wheels fall off because the crooks dominate the system.
If you understand this then it is only rational that the right-wing conservatives deserve to be punished. People that protest in front of AIG are being side tracked the real issue is the economic elite, their lap dog MSM and cable news networks as well as the politicians they have bought out!
PS: Dont see Knowing.
That's easy: Never.
Stop lobbing softballs. Give us a tough one, like how can we change the system? Whoops, that's easy too. We can't change the system.