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It's Not the "Great Recession". It's the Great BANK ROBBERY
In case it's not crystal clear, this isn't the "Great Recession".
It's really the Great Bank Robbery.
First, there was the threat of martial law if the $700 Billion Tarp bailout wasn't passed. Specifically, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson warned Congress that there would be martial law unless the Tarp bailouts were approved.
As I pointed out last October:
The New York Times wrote on July 16th:
In retrospect, Congress felt bullied by Mr. Paulson last year. Many of them fervently believed they should not prop up the banks that had led us to this crisis — yet they were pushed by Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke into passing the $700 billion TARP, which was then used to bail out those very banks.
***
Congressmen Brad Sherman and Paul Kanjorski and Senator James Inhofe all say that the government warned of martial law if Tarp wasn't passed:
Bait And Switch
Indeed, the Tarp Inspector General has said that Paulson misrepresented some fundamental aspects of Tarp.
And Paulson himself has said:
During the two weeks that Congress considered the [Tarp] legislation, market conditions worsened considerably. It was clear to me by the time the bill was signed on October 3rd that we needed to act quickly and forcefully, and that purchasing troubled assets—our initial focus—would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem. In consultation with the Federal Reserve, I determined that the most timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks.
So Paulson knew "by the time the bill was signed" that it wouldn't be used for its advertised purpose - disposing of toxic assets - and would instead be used to give money directly to the big banks?
But at least the bailout money was used to help the economy by stabilizing the financial sector, right?
Sorry.
As I wrote in March 2009:
The bailout money is just going to line the pockets of the wealthy, instead of helping to stabilize the economy or even the companies receiving the bailouts:
- Bailout money is being used to subsidize companies run by horrible business men, allowing the bankers to receive fat bonuses, to redecorate their offices, and to buy gold toilets and prostitutes
- A lot of the bailout money is going to the failing companies' shareholders
- Indeed, a leading progressive economist says that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is "a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives"
- The Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry (this has caused a lot of companies to bite off more than they can chew, destabilizing the acquiring companies)
And as the New York Times notes, "Tens of billions of [bailout] dollars have merely passed through A.I.G. to its derivatives trading partners".
***
In other words, through a little game-playing by the Fed, taxpayer money is going straight into the pockets of investors in AIG's credit default swaps and is not even really stabilizing AIG.
But at least the government is trying to help the struggling homeowner, right?
Well, PhD economists John Hussman and Dean Baker (and fund manager and financial writer Barry Ritholtz) say that the only reason the government keeps giving billions to Fannie and Freddie is that it is really a huge, ongoing, back-door bailout of the big banks.
Many also accuse Obama's foreclosure relief programs as being backdoor bailouts for the banks. (See this, this and this).
But certainly quantitative easing is helping the little guy?
Unfortunately, QE only helps the big banks and giant corporations, and the small number of investors who hold most of the stock. See this, this, this, this and this.
And now, the government has announced that it will maintain tax breaks for the wealthiest while considering slashing social security and medicare.
Warren Buffet famously said a couple of years ago:
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.
The proof is in the pudding: a small handful of people have ended up with a lot more loot in their safes, while everyone else has gotten a lot poorer. And, unfortunately, radical concentration of wealth is destroying both capitalism and democracy.
The government has not only failed to enforce any laws
to prevent theft, but has been so busy helping the big boys carry their
bags of cash that - even with the sheriff's badges - it is difficult to tell who is who.
- advertisements -
Collateralized Dogpoop Obligations.
We'll make godzillions.
It's just not strange enough, yet.
I’ve been saying this for three years.
Move over Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Bonnie, Clyde, and Dillinger. You’re excused. You folks don’t even rank in the halls of criminal history anymore. All your efforts combined pale by comparison to the great bank robbery of 2008 to present, when the largest banks in America robbed their customers of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Hundreds of billions! What did you do, convert the amount of the theft to 1913 dollars?
"Huge, ongoing, back-door bailout"
Sounds like the title of a feature length porno
There was a class war but it's over. I won't spoil the surprise by saying who won, except that it wasn't me, and if you are some malcontent spending their afternoon reading Zero Hedge rants, then it probably wasn't you either.
Do you think the families that own all those big "charitable" foundations are the winners? Congress? Congressional handlers? Or are the winners deeper, darker? Any guesses?
Excuse me, but I resemble that.
And by the way, that's Mr. Malcontent to you. :>)
Yes, but you see, it wasn't the banks that were robbed, they are a front. The theft was from the insurance annuity pool, pension fund and home equity. All the rest was just lubricant to keep the payment system from collapsing into cascading cross defaults. QE2 and the like are merely payment system continuation schemes.
...are "cascading cross defaults" the robo-signed mortgages that folks living in the frauded homes will never be able to prove they own because of the legal mess of having no paperwork while there may be who-knows-how-many CDO-owner claims against each property? Of if not that, please explain what.
GW. Any truth that AIG was bailed out because it has All Fed and Congressional pension monies? Among the other reasons
um-hm, now we're getting somewhere... I've been wondering where their money is. Could lots have been in Fannie?
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
– Plutarch
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
- Hunter S. Thompson
Take it from an aging baby-boomer. Most of my generation preferred the fantasy of self-adoration fostered by both corporations and governments to the responsibilities required for informed participation in the political process.
And both government and corporations like it that way!
It takes frequent thought and involvement in issues that you can effect to learn the skills of citizenship. Politics is central to your life. Don't leave it to others. (They'll rob you blind!)
While the elites won’t be inviting you in… you can always just crash the party… you just need the tools to open the door.
Capability ENABLES Responsibility…
Why Politics MUST be Localized
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-politics-must-be-localized.html
Empowering the Commons: The Dedicated Account (Part I)
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/08/empowering-commons-dedicated-account.html
A call for USEFUL financial innovation...
Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/07/decision-technologies-curre...
I think it's mostly too late for the boomer gen - at least the ones know - but maybe their kids and grandkids are tuned in enough to get on board and change things.
Faint hope, but hope nevertheless.
Dizzy: Unless their kids and/or grandkids are living n the basement!
hunter s thompson IS pretty appopriate about now
Thompson has been alive in every epoch of history.
Only the language and colloquialisms have changed.
The Banks went from being a symbiotic parasite to an outright cancer that does not care if the host surives
Shadow bankers want an easily-managed-by-them one world and a reduced population, whichis easily facilitated by wars, famines, sickening people with bad food and bad medical advice and pharmaceuticals, setting populations up to hate and kill each other... any of this sound familiar?
can we subject them to radiation and chemicals?
or at least forced vaccines and genital squeezes at airports?
Fine, except that you're an idiot. The proof is NEVER in the pudding. It's in the EATING. And we've eaten it, RAW.
Anger Management might be appropriate right about here.
Your fighting with one of the good guys. Take a step back and relax. Then realize that your frustration at not being able to strike at the bad guys is causing you to transfer that anger toward the person who is identifying our problems. Impotence is bad enough. Self induced impotence is much worse.
Find an old Playboy magazine (or PlayGirl if that's your boat or you're a female) and take care of some business. Then recognize your part in this insanity. Then find a way to strike where it hurts them, not yourself or your friends.
CD.. don't forget a bad full of poop contains the pooper's DNA. Make sure you use the neighborhood banker's poop just to false flag the shit.
LOL
See, this is why I would have failed at thieving, dirty dealing and back stabbing and why I never tried. I simply lack the imagination of the average sociopath.
You on the other hand.........
Hey Gee Dub,
It gets worse and worse from GOM eh?
And this article, spot on. But, so much more of the same and such a tepid response eh? Coals are being carried to newcastle while the amoral majority hits th esnooze button again and again.
By the way, it was a great bank robbery the last time around also.
Same actors even.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
GW, this is the second best thing on ZH yet, the other also being by you, both requiring a surplus of courage to declare the financial emperors have no clothes
The Federal Reserve created a currency based on debt usury and taxes, and that is what we got, lots of bills and legalized theft
At the rate we are going, interest on the so-called public debt may be the largest budget item in a few years
Americans are dropping out of the broken banking system one by one, one of the reasons it became so authoritarian with financial espionage and data mining to the point if deposits or expenditures change, the bank learns why
Not every person understands that once they give their money to a bank or broker, it is now no longer legally or practically their property. The FDIC & SIPC guarantees are underfunded convenient IOU sops like other unfunded government agency mandates and access to the virtual funds can be turned off with a switch or glitch
It is definitely beyond time to return to Friedman's computer constitutional monetary steady state supplies based on copper, gold, silver or equity with intrinsic value and no IOUs
Either Congress audits the Depositories, Fed, Mints and Treasuries thoroughly for the first time since Ike was President, and shuts the private Fed and Treasury down for fraudulent accounting, or people drop out of the system one by one until neither the Fed nor government has enough interest and tax revenues to stay solvent
It is also beyond time to replace the failed IRS special interest income tax with either a ten percent flat tax like the 13% flat tax in Russia that created her surplus, or the 28 basis point constitutional uniform Automatic Transparent Transaction Tax that Keynes, Tobin and even Summers at one time advocated
By returning to Constitutional authority and protections, including defending the borders, property rights and restoring the Bill of Rights, we can do much to put our country back to work and prosperity