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Who are these people? I am not referring to the pathetic parents of "Balloon Boy," whose fake drama I have been unable to escape while on the treadmill this week, thanks to my gym's insistence on tuning its flat-screen TVs to Wolf Blitzer's nonstop self-parody.
The Colorado incident was significant only in the tawdriness of those who perpetrated the made-for-TV scam and their allies in the mindless media who covered this sham "reality" so relentlessly. But even so it was enough to push aside most consideration of the true hoax reported last week with far less fervor: the obscene rewards that Wall Street bankers bestowed upon themselves for ripping off our economy.
The people I want to know more about are the superrich who expect to be rewarded for their failures, like the folks at Goldman Sachs who will receive $16.71 billion in bonuses--an average of $530,000 per employee--this year after their company did as much as any to bring the world economy to the brink of disaster.
"The Guys from Government Sachs" is what The New York Times once called them in recognition of their chokehold on the federal government. Their power is marked by the two treasury secretaries who led the fight to legally enable and then reward Wall Street for its obscene excesses. Why wasn't there a CNN stakeout at the homes of former Goldman-execs-turned-treasury-chiefs Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson aimed at finding out how they feel about the almost $7 billion profit that Goldman Sachs made in the last two quarters in the wake of the government's bailout of the firm?
They were both deeply involved last fall, along with Rubin protégé and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Fed, in saving Goldman as archrival Lehman Brothers was forced to go belly up. As opposed to Lehman, Goldman was allowed to change its status and become a commercial bank qualifying for Federal Reserve and TARP funding. Goldman received $10 billion in immediate bailout funds, and we are supposed to be grateful that the company has paid it back in return for an end to any pretense of government control over its executive compensation. The additional cool $12.9 billion that Goldman received from the government as a pass-through from the bailout of AIG to cover Goldman's toxic paper is money the investment bank has no intention of ever paying back.
The rationale for saving Goldman and the other too-big-to-fail usurers was that the rescue would increase lending to businesses and consumers and thus revive the economy. But Goldman made money last quarter by shunning such loans and instead putting the government-guaranteed low-interest money it now can borrow toward acquisitions and bond and stock trading. As The New York Times reported: "Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than the ho-hum business of lending people money."
Under the headline "Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth," Times reporter Graham Bowley detailed many of the enabling favors that the government, under two presidents, extended to Goldman, like clearing the way for the company to issue bonds guaranteed by the FDIC. "It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street," the Times reported, "is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system--reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institution debts--helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth."
It should not come as a surprise to Timothy Geithner, who, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, talks to the honchos of Goldman more often than to members of Congress ostensibly in charge of banking legislation. Nor will it shock the lobbyists for Wall Street--augmented, as The Nation reported last week, by the pro-Goldman efforts of former Democratic congressman and faux populist Dick Gephardt--that the rich will emerge richer from this deep recession in which so many Americans have lost everything. The die is cast: People working in finance grabbed two-thirds of the growth in GDP over the last decade, with the rest of us scrambling for the other third.
Nor will the situation change anytime soon. The House Financial Services Committee is in charge of writing new rules to protect consumers, but as the respected Sunlight Foundation reports, 27 of the 71 members of that committee receive at least one-fourth of their campaign funds from the financial industry, with the rest of the committee members not far behind.
Now if we could get one of the banking lobbyists to float a duct-taped flying saucer balloon, Wolf Blitzer might cover the real hoax.
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While it will not happen with Geithner in at Treasury, the Attorney General should investigate Hank Paulsen's decision to let Lehman Brothers die. This removed a major competitor for Goldman Sachs and has played a role in their enormous profits. Did Paulsen have a personal interest in Goldman's profits? I do not know, but as a taxpayer I deserve to know. Even if it was only his continued loyalty to a former employer, it reeks of improper self-interest.
Hear, hear!
Excellent point! Thanks!
This story would not exist in a resource based economy - all basics of life including our homes, education, food, medical would be a natural right of every citizen. Technology would be used to handle most of the work. City centers would be universities. People might work one day a week to help handle work not done by machinery. Government would be of the people via their input into a central database where their idea would be analyzed and added to the solutions that benefit society. See www.theven
Truly
Link didn't work for me.
Try
www.theven
Their proposed architecture dates from 30s/40s/50s/60s utopianism and aerodynamicism. Some of it is cool, but I think room should also be reserved for some English Tudor.
They seem to be selling some property in Florida as well.
Still, you don't explain why the Obama administration bought into this huge scam and I think that that is a very important point. How in the world do we choose our leadership? Go for the poorest person? Go for the richest who has previously shown a strong understanding for the poor through various programs he/she has supported and promulgated? Of course, Obama doesn't qualify when we talk about experience. We thought we were getting a very intelligent and empathetic man as president but some of his very early appointments, including Geithner, while showing an understanding of the need of people with experience and savvy, were also people who very tight ties to the biggest corporations and the other institutions of the rich...., VERY rich.
It's good to see this, for it's high time we limit all this ridiculous compensation for underperformance and failure. Ultimately, we must let these firms stand or fall on their own, lest we simply limp along into the twilight of our power.
Some way must be found to let these firms perish without bringing everything down with them, due to their complicated Ponzi-octopus tenatacles of investment, reaching everywhere. Then we must rebuild and reinvigorate our economy, so America becomes a wealthy producer instead of an indebted consumer. The example, China, as saver and now investor in the world's resources instead of our fat debt, will overtake us, unless we become the lean machine we once were.
For example, can't Detroit (and the other industries) get the message? Making inferior cars (or any product) and foreign producers will devour you. The top has become too fat, with bonuses and pay, too complacent. We don't want the U.S. to become a fat, old, weary man to make way for younger, smarter businesses from Asia.
IT STARTS WITH PAY AND BONUSES. IF PAID TO GET FAT, OR MAKE MONEY WITH GIMMICKS, WITHOUT REAL WORK, THEY WILL. See the inferior cars, derivatives, credit default swaps, etc., etc., Easy come, easy go. Work at it, or fail. IT'S THE SAME FREE MARKET PHILOSOPHY THEY TOUT FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT THEMSELVES. For more, see my blog, http://www
it seem people are making fun as a media in a whole but the main idea of the story came in from the New York Times...a media
maintaining the essential status quo for this freewheeling (to put it mildly) way of doing things seems to imply there is no real belief the country can go back to competing in the global marketplace doing the usual nuts and bolts things to pay the bills as did in days of yore - increasingly a casino economy, caveat emptor
Dear Mr. Scheer,
I keep getting scrubbed!
All I want is to find a place to sign up for a unified public outcry!
pt1
""...the rich will emerge richer from this deep recession.
You've hit the nail on the head here as usual, Mr. Scheer. And their increase in wealth (and power) is no one time thing.
The very same corporations and moneyed interests that architected this Recession, are the same behind every economic disaster we've faced as a Country since at least the Great Depression.
Jefferson warned of the powers of the banks and corporations. Jackson ended the charter of the National Bank in order to "rout them out." Lincoln admitted that his greater enemy during the Civil War, was the banking interests trying to control the Nation. Wilson bemoaned his unwitting support of the Federal Reserve amendment. And JFK paid for his desire to print true government backed dollars--not Federal Reserve Notes--and his plans to end the FED.
We've been warned. You warn us here again, today. The problems are Systemic. There is no distinction between Washington and Wall Street. And the dots that make our history are common knowledge to some people. So I have two questions:
pt2
1. Why is no one (other than perhaps Matt Taibbi) willing to connect those dots, and show us exactly who is running this pyramid scheme and how? This could be done simply, briefly for the millions who are now unaware. If it's fear of being labeled a tin foil conspiracist, I think we are well past that point. If it is another sort of fear, I understand. But I cannot find this information even in Howard Zinn's work, and we NEED that history in order to change. And then we need prosecutions!
2. Why has no one given the People (you know, those 99% of us--Hi Olephart) a game plan--simple, baby steps, implementable starting today--for surviving (and hopefully even thriving) during this corporate bank heist? Not investment advice, but real world survival stuff that will move us away from corporate control and off the bankers grid. Try and find this kind of information that allows working people to take control of their own destinies and accept responsibility for their well being--you won't.
Here! Here! Someone has to start something! I'm in where do I sign up!
There are millions of us on the net who'd be willing to jump in and do the foot work today if someone with the pulpit that Scheer or any other celebrity blogger on HuffPo (are you listening Arianna?) would outline a program and get the ball rolling on a national level. Sure, we could go door to door in our own towns and maybe have some effect, but time's running out and we need a big engine to power this movement. I've asked every writer on HP to help. So far, not one has offered.
Good Post Mr. Scheer, not to take away from your wonderful insight... but to add to it.
Dylan Ratigan on msnbc has some suggestions:
1: take your money our of these big banks and put it in local community banks or CU's
2. Use cash, not credit cards
3. Write and call your congressmen, hold them to the fire, threaten to elect progressive and then do it. Donate money to to real reform candidates. Do you know how your congressmen and senator really votes, do their votes agree with their rhetoric?
Turn Goldman anger into government action
Ratigan: Banks continue to steal from the taxpayers who bailed them out
http://www
Could you please organize with Dylan and pool your followers into one cohesive unit.
He has spelled out a plan, that is what we need more of from our prominent intelligentsia like you. Rhetoric and a plan, and we'll force them to bend to the will of common good. Thanks!
I like to read yr take on issues Robert Scheer, I also enjoy the calibre of the comments yr articles attract, both reads are worth it.
Now that we know that the Bubble Boy is safe, would it be too much to ask for the TV networks to send some reporters and satellite trucks to Wall Street and the Treasury Dept. to ask these whores some tough questions?
And let's not forget the President. He needs to be asked some tough questions about this fiasco as well.
As a nation, we dodged a pretty serious bullet last year. How much of a calamity has to occur before the public and the media stand up and demand accountability from the titans of industry and their puppets in the government?
Hey look, there's something shiny floating in the sky!!!!
I'm not going to waste any more time watching shiny floating balloons in the sky, since Nancy Grace on CNN HN has just dug up something more important.
The hope that the media might cover such a misfortune of lobbyist are lost. There is nothing
to expect much from the media now. Consider for instance the majority of financial TV pundits
in that flashback video and the opinion-making of the media over the years:
http://www
The bank bail-out was probably the greatest swindle ever perpetrated in human history. A problem is that nothing has changed, the same people who took the money are resisting reform and the "To Big To Fail" is now even "To Bigger to Fail". As any real reform drops by the wayside, the entire episode is guaranteed to repeat itself with an even bigger blowup next time.
Not necessarily. We can fight back. We can protest. Perhaps they could advertise a protest with hot women on stage and equally appealing entertainment for the other side. You know, like Raquel Welch showing up in Vietnam to entertain the troops.
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