You're now on the archive server. Commenting has been disabled.
The Ongoing Cover Up of the Truth Behind the Financial Crisis May Lead to Another Crash
- CDS
- Corruption
- Dean Baker
- default
- ETC
- FBI
- Federal Reserve
- Fitch
- Foreclosures
- Great Depression
- Housing Bubble
- Janet Tavakoli
- Kaptur
- Medicare
- Obama Administration
- Rating Agencies
- Rating Agency
- ratings
- Ratings Agencies
- recovery
- Simon Johnson
- Stress Test
- Structured Finance
- Testimony
- Tim Geithner
- Time Magazine
- White House
William K. Black - professor of economics and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - says that that the government's entire strategy now - as during the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts").
Indeed, as I have previously documented,
7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980's
during the "Latin American Crisis", and the government's response was
to cover up their insolvency.
Black also says:
There has been no honest examination of the crisis because it would embarrass C.E.O.s and politicians . . .
Instead, the Treasury and the Fed are urging us not to examine the crisis and to believe that all will soon be well.
PhD economist Dean Baker made a similar point, lambasting
the Federal Reserve for blowing the bubble, and pointing out that those
who caused the disaster are trying to shift the focus as fast as they
can:
The current craze in DC policy
circles is to create a "systematic risk regulator" to make sure that
the country never experiences another economic crisis like the current
one. This push is part of a cover-up of what really went wrong and does absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem that led to this financial and economic collapse.
Baker also says: "Instead of striving to uncover the truth, [Congress] may seek to conceal it" and tell banksters they're free to steal again.
Economist Thomas Palley says that Wall Street also has a vested interest in covering up how bad things are:
That
rosy scenario thinking has returned to Wall Street should be no
surprise. Wall Street profits from rising asset prices on which it
charges a management fee, from deal-making on which it earns advisory
fees, and from encouraging retail investors to buy stock, which boosts
transaction fees. Such earnings are far larger when stock markets are
rising, which explains Wall Street’s genetic propensity to pump the
economy.
The media has largely parroted what the White
House and Wall Street were saying. As a Pew Research Center study on
the coverage of the crisis found:
The
gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression has been covered in
the media largely from the top down, told primarily from the
perspective of the Obama Administration and big business, and reflected
the voices and ideas of people in institutions more than those of
everyday Americans…
Citizens may be the primary victims of the downturn, but they have not been not the primary actors in the media depiction of it.
A
PEJ content analysis of media coverage of the economy during the first
half of 2009 also found that the mainstream press focused on a
relatively small number of major story lines, mostly generating from
two cities, the country’s political and financial capitals.
A
companion analysis of a broader array of media using new “meme tracker”
technology developed at Cornell University finds that phrases and ideas
that reverberated most in the coverage came early on, mostly from
government, particularly from the president and the chairman of the
Federal Reserve...
- Three storylines have dominated: efforts
to help revive the banking sector, the battle over the stimulus package
and the struggles of the U.S. auto industry. Together they accounted
for nearly 40% of the economic coverage from February 1 through August
31. Other topics related to the crisis have been covered much less. As
an example, all the reporting of retail sales, food prices, the impact
of the crisis on Social Security and Medicare, its effect on education
and the implications for health care combined accounted for just over
2% of all the economic coverage.
- Actions by
government officials and business leaders drove much of the coverage.
The White House and federal agencies alone initiated nearly a third
(32%) of economic stories studied through July 3. Business triggered
another 21%. About a quarter of the stories (23%) was initiated by the
press itself and did not rely on an external news trigger. Ordinary
citizens and union workers combined to act as the catalyst for only 2%
of the stories about the economy.
- Fully 76% of the
datelines on economic stories studied during the first five months of
the Obama presidency were New York (44%) or metro Washington D.C.
(32%). Only about one-fifth (21%) of the stories originated in any
other city in the U.S., and about a quarter of those emanated from two
other major media centers: Atlanta and Los Angeles.
As I have previously reported, concentration in the mainstream media (along with a number of other dynamics) has severely undermined the credibility of the media.
Why Should We Care?
Why should we care if there has been a cover up?
Well,
initially, if there has been activity which is harmful to the economy
and may lead to another financial crisis, wouldn't we want to know
about it, so that we prevent it from happening again?
The answer is obviously yes.
But
if the government, Wall Street, and the media are all in cover-up mode,
then independent auditors, financial analysts and economists cannot
shine a light into financial practices to find out what really went
wrong.
In addition, if we don't know what's really going on, we
can't gauge whether the government's economic policies are working. For
example, Time Magazine called Tim Geithner a "con man" and the stress tests a "confidence game" because those tests were so inaccurate.
William Black said:
How
do you think we did the stress tests? Like doing a stress test on an
airplane wing, but you don’t actually have airplane wing. And don’t
know what airplane wing is made out of. It’s a farce.
I agree.
Without accurate information, we will not know if we're heading in the right or the wrong direction.
Fraud
One of the foremost experts on structured finance and derivatives - Janet Tavakoli - says that rampant fraud and Ponzi schemes caused the financial crisis.
University of Texas economics professor James K. Galbraith agrees:
You had fraud in the origination of the mortgages, fraud in the underwriting, fraud in the ratings agencies.
Congress woman Marcy Kaptur says that there was rampant fraud leading up to the crash (see this and this).
According to economist Max Wolff:
The
securitization process worked by "packag(ing), sell(ing), repack(aging)
and resell(ing) mortages making what was a small housing bubble, a
gigantic (one) and making what became an American financial problem
very much a global" one by selling mortgage bundles worldwide "without
full disclosure of the lack of underlying assets or risks."
Buyers
accepted them on good faith, failed in their due diligence, and rating
agencies were negligent, even criminal, in overvaluing and endorsing
junk assets that they knew were high-risk or toxic. "The whole process
was corrupt at its core."
William Black says that massive fraud by is what caused the economic crisis. Specifically, he says
that companies, auditors, rating agencies and regulators all committed
fraud which helped blow the bubble and sowed the seeds of the
inevitable crash. And see this.
Indeed, as I have previously noted, the giant ratings agencies have a culture of covering up improper ratings (and they essentially took bribes for giving higher ratings).
Black also notes:
- Everyone
involved knew that the CDOs which packaged subprime loans were not AAA
credit-worthy (which means that they are completely risk-free). He also
said that the exotic instruments (CDOs, CDS, etc.) which spun the
mortgages into more and more abstract investments were intentionally created to defraud investors
- The
government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the
FBI warned of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the
FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing.
See this and this
- "Accounting
is the weapon of choice in the financial sphere", with the top
executives involved in these fraudulent schemes vacuuming out huge
profits for themselves and select insiders, and having auditors rubber
stamp what's being done
- In November 2007, one
rating agency - Fitch's - dared to take a look at some loan files.
Fitch concluded that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file reviewed
Black and economist Simon Johnson also state
that the banks committed fraud by making loans to people that they knew
would default, to make huge profits during the boom, knowing that the
taxpayers would bail them out when things went bust.
The Economy Won't Recover Until We Prosecute
So there was a little fraud, no big deal, right?
Wouldn't looking backwards at fraudulent conduct be distracting for the people, the government, and the economy? Shouldn't we look forward so we can recover?
No.
Specifically, the Wharton School of Business has written an essay stating that restoring trust is the key to recovery, and that trust cannot be restored until wrongdoers are held accountable.
The Wharton paper states:
The
public will need to "hold the perpetrators of the economic disaster
responsible and take what actions they can to prevent them from harming
the economy again." In addition, the public will have to see proof that
government and business leaders can behave responsibly before they will
trust them again...
For more on the importance of trust in the economy, see this.
The stakes are high. As Pam Martens, who worked on Wall Street for 21 years, writes: The It
massive losses by big Wall Street firms, now topping those of the Great
Depression in relative terms, have yet to be adequately explained. Wall
Street power players are obfuscating and Congress is too embarrassed or
frightened to ask, preferring to just throw money at the problem and
hope it goes away. But as job losses and foreclosures mount and
pensions and 401(k)s shrink, public policy measures to address the
economic stresses require a full set of unembellished facts...
was four years after the crash of 1929 before the major titans of Wall
Street were forced to give testimony under oath to Congress and the
full magnitude of the fraud emerged. That delay may well have
contributed to the depth and duration of the Great Depression. The
modern-day Wall Street corruption hearings in Congress ... must now
resume in earnest and with sworn testimony if we are to escape a
similar fate.
GW, well done, but really, you should take on the identity of Thomas Paine...right now we need Paine...later, a general
i got in late so ask...who (or what) the hell is "ZH"? Jackl
abbrvtn for the Hedge of Zeriousness
ZH is one of many disjunct "islands" of information attempting to pry the truth from a corrupted financial oligarchy and a political kleptocracry bent upon maintaining its control, power and money at the expense of the masses, while fleecing them in the process.
The problem with the good ideas discussed herein (national class action suit, Fed audit, wedges into the motor's gears etc.), for holding all accountable, is one of understanding and economies of scale. There are simply not enough of "us" who understand this rotten mess to effect any meaningful change before the wheels come off. At ZH, we are a small choir. And we need to get bigger in a hurry if we intend to have a meaningful impact on the direction we are headed. Oh, and save what we have left of our investments as I would rather not barter.
The key is how to unravel, to the masses, this Gordian knot of all that has been perpetrated and, have them understand. Americans may be angry now, but it is diffuse, it is anger without true understanding. Energy should be directed towards exponentially increasing the scale of those who understand. Then, that anger will be focused and can be appropriately directed at those who should be held accountable.
Oligarchs and kleptocrats have forgotten the first rule of parasitism: take more than you need but, don't kill the host or, really piss them off. In this case they are doing both. An awakened AND enlightened "host" can eradicate parasites - you just need more firepower. And right now their "guns" are bigger than ours and they have more of them. Ideas welcomed...
Anonymous: You make very good points.
And please note that the parasites are trying to put the host back to sleep.
Since it is the weekend...
GW, thanks for the compliment and for the link to the outstanding Naked Capitalism article. Your blog work has been excellent- at great odds, you will be crossing an ice-choked river soon, I hope you are ready. Per your observations on the “parasites.”
Indeed the "parasites" have an unlimited budget to use every "psy-ops" and mind bending subliminal tool available to make sure most of America stays asleep. Or, at the very least, they want Americans so ill-informed and confused as to who to blame or attack for the destruction of their wealth, their focus will be diffused and therefore, largely ineffective.
But, as I stated in my comments, I believe the “parasites” have gone too far and have pushed the U.S. to the brink of another abyss. When the financial markets crack, as they will sooner than later, I believe we have the capacity to form a vital critical mass to rip the lies apart, expose the fraud, theft and deception, as ZH is doing. The next steps after that get tough. Educate enough people to create a movement with such knowledge and ferocity that the financial oligarchs and political kleptocrats actually fear for their existence. Only when “they” become afraid for what they have done, do we have a chance to take a sword to Alexander’s Gordian knot, cut it in half and create true accountability and consequences.
In our current predicament, as in all Greek tragedies, there are protagonists and antagonists leading to a climax. The mainstream media asserts that the climax in this tragedy was last fall. That is impossible. Why? There was no denouement or catharsis! After the climax, comes the denouement, which consists of a series of events that follow the climax of this drama, and thus serves as the conclusion of the story. Denouement is better known today as: “a come to Jesus moment.” If anyone thinks the banks and politicians have had that occur, look at GS and JPM’s recent profit statements and the current watering down of all meaningful financial regulations.
No, instead of a Fall 2008 climax, I will categorically state we are still armpit deep in “it” as we travel the curve leading up to the REAL climax because no one has been held accountable and there has most assuredly been no catharsis. In catharsis conflicts are resolved, creating normality for the characters and a sense of catharsis, or release of tension and anxiety. The only people feeling less tense and anxious are bankers and politicians!
For this country to avoid anarchy in some form or fashion, there must be a true climax (another Black Swan) that can lead to a denouement. What will it look like? How will we know it when we see it? Well, denouement and catharsis might look something like this: TBTF banks broken up, Glass-Steagall reinstated, dark pools eliminated, CDS’s having true counterparties on the hook, HFT front running and flashing banned, regulated and transparent markets, Fed audited yearly, Bernanke thrown out, Geithner removed, bank profits clawed back, bankers going to jail, and politicians jailed or thrown out of office. That is just a start but it might just keep us from going over the edge. I said, might.
The motor of their engine is money. Not wealth or capital but money [scrip]. Their money does not exist to honor the value of man's foremost contribution to his age, to recognize the role of his reason in applying and manipulating the laws of nature to craft his continual improvements. Their money exists to provide his strangehold. To lock his reason in a vice. To ultimately shut down his own motor; his mind. They knew damn good and well just exactly what they were doing the day they hung the shingle 'Federal Reserve Opens for Business.' We are way overdue for a reset. Our compass has long been out of balance. It's time to stop the motor. It can be done if someone would just slide a wedge in the gears. The motor runs on money. Stop the flow of money and you kill the motor. Stop the flow of money and you will kill the whole damn scheme dead in its tracks. I never said it would be easy. I just said it would work.
dangerously close to seeing a topBla bla bla. Never have i seen so many words with so little facts. A phd economist who writes about "banksters"? Never heard of the guy, but congratulations. You've been able to find an academic who writes like someone from the local sports bar. Great. Moving on.
I love how some ZH readers think you are just so smart, that you have been able to dig up "the truth". What you are ACTUALLY doins is cheering on your own deluded self-affirmed conclusions, a typical example being the phrase the author cites as evidence, from Black. "everyone knows that CDOs were frauds".
Is this what debate has come down to? Forget CNBC, this is tabloid level intelligence.
Another typical example of these posts is that they come without a a shred of factual evidence. Example: "Fitch found, thousands of cases of mortgage fraud". Oh really. Can you please cite me the source of the info? Is it your cousins grandmother who happens to be an ex-regulator and have a phd in economics?
Look, i am all for people having committed frauds to pay. But shouting about the whole system and all bankers being a fraud is a fraud in itself. An intellectual one, to say the least.
Bla bla bla. Never have i seen so many words with so little facts. A phd economist who writes about "banksters"? Never heard of the guy, but congratulations. You've been able to find an academic who writes like someone from the local sports bar. Great. Moving on.
I love how some ZH readers think you are just so smart, that you have been able to dig up "the truth". What you are ACTUALLY doins is cheering on your own deluded self-affirmed conclusions, a typical example being the phrase the author cites as evidence, from Black. "everyone knows that CDOs were frauds".
Is this what debate has come down to? Forget CNBC, this is tabloid level intelligence.
Another typical example of these posts is that they come without a a shred of factual evidence. Example: "Fitch found, thousands of cases of mortgage fraud". Oh really. Can you please cite me the source of the info? Is it your cousins grandmother who happens to be an ex-regulator and have a phd in economics?
Look, i am all for people having committed frauds to pay. But shouting about the whole system and all bankers being a fraud is a fraud in itself. An intellectual one, to say the least.
It seems you were born without a brain
http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/?page_id=4469
Perma-Bear,
Thanks for the link !
This would all be great if it wasn't just a thinly disguised Obama bashing. I'm no great fan of Obama or the dems but to casually pin it on them suggests that the problem would be solved if we got rid of them. The problem is in fact actually bigger than them.
somebody's got to be the fall guy; and Bush III is probably our guy.
*no shit Sherlock*
I'm getting sick and tired with you n00bs who heard about ZH while watching CNBC and then came to the site with your outdated opinions. You can browse trough tens of thousands of comments and hundreds of post and you will find that the bashing is universal. It goes right, left, in the center, up and down. Also, if you hang around on ZH you will find out that here we don't do politically correct opinions just to be liked. Truth, and nothing but the truth is the name of the game round here. And yes, the problem is bigger than them, than you, than me, than all of us; but they do hold the majority in the congress for 3 yrs and held the majority for the most part of the last 50 yrs and gave more presidents than the republicraps; so saying that this is a bash fest is simply not true. Here, the hatred ( or dislike ) is aimed towards all who have betrayed, corrupted or in any other way undervalued the basic principles we promote here.
Does anyone in your country still actually think there is any difference between the two parties? The types of issues they 'debate' over during elections are laughibly irrelevant to people from other developed countries:
- gun control
- border security
- abortion
- teaching sex education / abstinence
- religion in schools
- 'small government' / fiscal responsibility lip service
I am not a huge Noam Chomsky fan, but he sums it up:
"Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party."
The bottom line is that both parties have engaged in the same stimulus spending/ bailouts, and I am quite sure they would have done similar things over the past 12 months.
agree; i don't know why you thought that i need post explaining me this ( since i'm basically saying the same things over and over and over again on ZH ), but i'm glad you took the time and did it. Of course i agree with you, and it is pretty much the same in any other country on the planet ( minus the legalized bribe system in the form of " contributions " you have in the US )
part of the reason i post anything is just hoping that people that dont know the truth about the corrupted machine driving our country will hear...and as such, the broken record routine is very apropos.
Just the facts folks....Too bad more folks don't bother themselves to actually read and learn. Although if the price for waking up the world is to play reintroduce the facts I know you and most all of us will...
Use criminals to CATCH criminals, not to correct the framework of the system. Geithner and his gang need their walking papers.
The name of the last 5 US presidents is Henry Kissinger
*snort*
Any relation?
Systemic Risk of Financial Collapse Resulting in Fuzzy Regulatory OversightBy: Stephen Mauzy
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article14249.html
glad I was able to help with the Koo stuff. The marketers of these loans were the ones commiting fraud. A profit of billions stuffed in the pockets of a few shouldn't be allowed for something that costs trillions. But, this credit bubble was preordained. The 1990's were a bubble and had we not had the mechanism of lower interest rates and home equity in the early 1990's, everything would have deflated by then. Paul Volker was as big a disaster as Greenspan. The world has been deflating for 20 years. It merely hit the high internal debt exporters first. A high savings rate in Japan was also a propellant of a high debt rate as well. The Japan bubble behaved just as ours did, stocks first then real estate.
GW, your work is always amazing.
Interrogatory No. 487. Regarding the AIG Bailout, identify specifically which banks, financial institutions and other entities or persons (the "AIG Counterparties") who would not be paid in the event of the bankruptcy of AIG and its resulting inability to meet its obligations under its credit insurance portfolio. State the amount in dollars of liabilities to each of the companies. Identify all documents relating to your response.
Interrogatory No. 488. Identify all individuals who worked on the AIG Bailout plan and provide their names, addresses and telephone numbers, and identify with specificity their roles, duties and authority, and their immediate supervisor.
"immediate supervisor" hahahah no onesupervises the privately held federal reserve and all their agents ( namely, treas sec.....and all the legislators that anoint the crimes of the bailout )
Yet.
I am with Ned on this big time. Ruthlessly reestablish the rule of law or anarchy will ruthlessly feed itself, at our expense.
me too, i was just laughing in despair!
agrotera, I hope you know that I have the highest respect for you and your deep engagement. You are so right. Sometimes we must laugh since it is far better than most of the alternatives...
All The Best.. Always
Thank you so very much Miles Keding, and I thank you for sharing as well!!! And very best wishes to you always Miles Keding!!!
i think we are heart brokened for our nation, and trying desparately to figure out how to right some things that are so deeply wrong since i think so many of us can see that the "train of abuses and usurpations" is just too long ... and here i go again, but the declaration of independence describes times like these:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
Since William K. Black has outlined it all, and Elizabeth Warren has detailed much of the aftermath of the fraud perpetrated by our own government for the benefit of the banking industry (more appropriately, a monster monopoly headed by the privately held federal reserve) couldn't we all just start somewhere by coming together as a class action? After hearing about he lawyer suing the government on behalf of the Madoff victim and saying that although our govenment hides behind sovereign immunity, when it comes to wrongdoing, our govenment is just like an individual and needs to be held accountable....
Our country is infested with the crime and fraud that William K. Black outlines, and it would seem that we can't limit ourwork on correcting the wrongdoings to show trials and a few bullshit convictions...we need to clean out and as the dotorg "kickthemallout" suggests, we need to start fresh by naming the problem, ending the fed, firing most of the government and maybe putting some of the puppets in jail, and jailing all the fraudsters that perpetrated the crimes...
let's start a class action suite against our country for committing fraud on the US Citizens.
if anyone is fool enough to believe the cia-fed controlled press i got some property on the brooklyn bridge i can get for you WHOLESALE....pssst...keep it to yourself sos yous don't ruin it for everbody...
Confidence game. Nothing more.
I cant believe that folks on this forum are naive enough to believe that government is to blame and politicians are responsible. If you have read ZH long enough you would know that there are far greater forces at work here that the US government..its just a branch of the Goldman Sachs new world order. Thats not hyperbole.
The Pecora Commission took 4 years to conduct because the paid off electeds that caused the Great Depression I had to be ousted from office first. It took that long. Andy Mellon was ousted from Treasury, too, and FDR tried like hell to bust him on tax fraud, but couldn't get it done. Mellon just out-monied them .....then donated the National Gallery of Art as a trade for peace.
Nothing will happen with this Capitol Hill crew. They're co-conspirators. All must go.
Clean out this pigpen in '10. The rest in '12.
yes - all must be destroyed and replaced with a
new crew....obushma must be destroyed too - he
is as much a part of the fraud as the banksters
and is in fact rockefeller's hand chosen vessel
of evil....
Buy gold. Not GLD. Gold.
Spot on, George. And help is on the way, www.faustomics.com and see its emerging political movement too, www.lebowskiparty.com. Love your work, please keep it up.
Also, rock on Faustian Bargain on your above comment. Boaz knew the deal too.
I cant believe that folks on this forum are naive enough to believe that government is to blame and politicians are responsible. If you have read ZH long enough you would know that there are far greater forces at work here that the US government..its just a branch of the Goldman Sachs new world order. Thats not hyperbole.
If the US govt were just a branch of GS, then by holding the US govt responsible, we would actually be holding GS responsible. So, you should have no problem with this.
It's almost trivial to point out the ways the government is complicit and caused the mess we're in. Goldman Sachs may or may not have had as much influence as you assert, but I'm pretty sure they didn't write the Constitution, which the government is using daily as a doormat to wipe its dirty boots. Keep the government limited to the restrictions outlined in the Constitution, and whatever influence GS (or the Illuminati, or extra-terrestrials) may or may not have will quickly become minimized.
goldman sachs is just one tentacle of the rockefeller
/ rothschild axis of evil which runs the world....
the us government is partially manipulated by
gs and in part by cfr which is owned by the rockefellers...
however, gs is just a piece of the puzzle...
until there are dead banksters amerika is the
stomping ground of the rich and the famous
with raping, looting, and mayhem the leitmotif...
Obamafraud Market...change we can believe in
Obama is a proven accomplice in the crimes, period. He is just the new puppet in Chief, promoted and purchased by the privately held federal reserve and all their agents...they buy both candidates for every election to ensure that their crimes will be legalized.
I like the leader on tv the other day who when talking about health care said " socialized medicine is the scare tactic term in America. American medicine is the scare term to the rest of the world" That ideal could pass on over to the economy. We just plain need a different system. All the socialized programs on deck wouldnt do the damage to America our leaders of business did.
Lets face it the best capitalists won and this is what the landscape of that ideology looks like. They are doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people.... and that number is ONE.
"I like the leader on tv the other day"
Of course you do, if you know what's good for you.
This is the misinformed mindset that needs to change. Keep reading this site and you may happen across the truth that what we have is not capitalism, but corporatism or a kind of fascism. Perhaps you've heard the phrase 'private gains, socialized losses'...that's basically fascism.
If you think the so-called 'capitalism' of America is the scare term, you may want to revise your definition of 'socialized medicine' as well. What we have now in the finance sector is what would happen in the medical industry.
Excellent Analysis!
All I ask now is what can we do to get the fraudsters into prison and negate their fraudulent alphabet soup of financial instruments. I've written my senators, only one replied saying that "financial innovation was key to keeping America strong." (translation: their cash helps in my retirement plan). The US is fading before our eyes. I do not think it was an illusion, but I see these financial oligarchs stealing it peacemeal before our eyes, claiming national and organizational security as a basis for continuing to hide their fraud.
I am tired, scared, and sick of all that I see.
You hit the nail on the head. The cynical crooks and Failed Men Summers, Rubin, Taxcheatgeithner are using National Security grounds to convince Obama that a cover-up is the only thing keeping the American people from panicking.
I am betting that Obama, who has already heard some truth from Stiglitz, will see through the criminals and take action as the S&P slices through 500.
The Firing of Robert Rubin will herald the change in mindset. The Ratings agency heads are as good as in jail- their crimes are so clear-cut and blatent, and the bankers will make deals before the Raters do, they are just a little more cunning.