As I predicted in my December 7, '07 Huffington blog the plot to bail out the greedy mortgage banks was in the legal racketeering incubator. It has now come to pass. The high finance schemers are now demanding an escalation beyond the 30 billion dollars doled out for Bear Stearns. To save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 300 billion dollars in ransom is demanded.
The patriot's alarm must be sounded! Basic conscience and morality dictate that those who insist that the mortgage lenders are "too big to fail" must also vote to accommodate the millions of shelter seeking families who are too desperate and too numerous for the Congress to fail them.
Simultaneously with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the FDIC regulated banks are failing, causing inevitable new demands for taxpayer rescue rights. The Wall Street geniuses have produced a profitable disaster again -- and Congress is now being told that it must "act responsibly" with a mega-buck handout.
The pending vote on a multi-billion dollar bailout swindle will be the domestic policy equivalent to the vote to declare war on Iraq. For the remainder of their careers every member of Congress will have to justify this vote to his or her constituents.
Look closely and see how a Ponzi scheme concocted by America's best and brightest, with superb logarithms and mysterious hedge fund equations, is launched for a second time within thirty years. It is the Savings and Loan (S&L) debacle all over again.
As it was in the era of the S&L swindle the collapse of many FDIC regulated banks is emerging simultaneously with the collapse of the chartered entities -- Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- which have a greater moral claim for more direct federal assistance. As it was in the earlier bailout, we can anticipate that the rescue operations will be legislatively merged as the FDIC coffers are emptied and new schemes are invented to assist powerful depositors -- Arab sheiks, Asian corporate czars, etc. -- whose accounts total more than the guaranteed 100 thousands dollars.
Honesty from the present banking regulatory leadership is to be commended. A proper democratic debate on the utilization of 300 billion dollars can now commence. In contrast, twenty years ago, to placate the S&L racketeers, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan, and FDIC Boss Seidman performed masterful deceptions that emasculated citizen protest impulses. For the more than 500 billion envisioned by the S&L schemers there was a multiplicity of evasion tactics with the bailout billions being first requested in small installments of less than a hundred billion. However, as confused voters began to wake up and raise questions there was a swiftly legislated complex construction of bailout procedures and entities such as the Resolution Trust Corporation to relieve the lawmakers of the decision-making burden of bailout appropriations -- and end open public discussion. The blank check was delivered with zero transparency.
As this second tsunami of taxpayer robbery escalates there is at least a small window of transparency. The outrageous proposals have been made, but as of July 21st Congress has not voted to yield the ransom. The clock is ticking with ten days remaining before the summer recess. There is a window of opportunity for rational voices to be heard. Homeowners in foreclosure proceedings or threatened with them will converge on Washington between Thursday July 24th and Thursday July 31st for a final surge to stop the big bank bailouts and win the enactment of legislation that freezes home mortgage foreclosures for a year.
Housing advocates from public housing and other forms of affordable housing will join the Washington offensive for a comprehensive housing program in a Peoples' Hearing on Federal Bailout Money at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation (212 East Capitol Street), which is within sight of the Capitol building. Testimony from the victims of mortgage swindlers and tenants suffering from a federal neglectful housing policy will be received from 12 noon to 12 midnight. Former Congressman Major Owens will chair the hearing.