One Man's Take on The Wall Street Mess

[Rohirrim]

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Read the rest here: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres49.html

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

This "bail-out" isn't an effort to fix the financial system - it's an attempt to (a) buy the repigs six more weeks so they can get McBush elected, and (b) to consolidate the banking system into the hands of an even smaller group of players.

[frerottenextelway]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

This "bail-out" isn't an effort to fix the financial system - it's an attempt to (a) buy the repigs six more weeks so they can get McBush elected, and (b) to consolidate the banking system into the hands of an even smaller group of players.

Yep. The bailout plan is bull****. It includes giving money to "very successful banks and investment houses that have done very well". That is so ****ing disgusting.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

And the crook (Henry Paulson) who is overseeing the bail-out is the former CEO of the investment bank (read: gambling house) that would benefit the most.
Henry M Paulson Jr

Total Compensation
$16.40 mil (#81)

5-Year Compensation Total
$46.74 mil

Henry M Paulson Jr has been CEO of Goldman Sachs Group (GS) for 8 years. Mr. Paulson Jr has been with the company for 15 years .The 60 year old executive ranks 12 within Diversified Financials

Stock Owned

$632.4 mil

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/VY36.html

[mhgaffney]

The Dave,

The problem is bigger than just the bad mortgages. The banksters have been playing roulette with other people's money. I refer to the whole derivative Ponzi scheme business -- a legalized skimming racket -- which runs into the tens of trillions.

By comparison the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bail out involves something like 5 trillion.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

The Dave,

The problem is bigger than just the bad mortgages. The banksters have been playing roulette with other people's money. I refer to the whole derivative Ponzi scheme business -- a legalized skimming racket -- which runs into the tens of trillions.

By comparison the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bail out involves something like 5 trillion.

The truth is that nobody knows the final number which means that people are throwing numbers around to fit their own political biases and/or anxieties. But it has been a giant Ponzi scheme. This $700 billion Paulson wants is only the beginning. Better to cut off the junkies now than wait. As with trying to slowly wean any junkie, it will only get worse.

[frerottenextelway]

Originally Posted by TheDave

I started my own thread for this... But since it applies here also. Could someone show me what i am missing.

From the WH:

... the Secretary of Treasury said it would make more difficult to make this plan work and effective if you provide disincentives for companies and firms out there who are holding mortgage-backed securities and other securities from participating in the program. You have to remember, these are not all weak or troubled firms that own mortgage-backed securities. A lot of them are very successful banks and investment houses that have done very well, have been responsible, are holding performing assets that have value.

So, the ''bailout'' plan includes giving tax payer money to banks that are in no danger of going under. It's taking money from main street to give to the rich for no other reason than to make the rich richer. It's VooDoo economics on steroids.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by frerottenextelway

From the WH:



So, the ''bailout'' plan includes giving tax payer money to banks that are in no danger of going under. It's taking money from main street to give to the rich for no other reason than to make the rich richer. It's VooDoo economics on steroids.

Warren Buffett just pumped 5 bil into Goldman Sachs.

[baja]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

This "bail-out" isn't an effort to fix the financial system - it's an attempt to (a) buy the repigs six more weeks so they can get McBush elected, and (b) to consolidate the banking system into the hands of an even smaller group of players.

This is what is being missed in all the chaos.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by baja

This is what is being missed in all the chaos.

Smaller and much, much bigger which can never be allowed to fail, under the present philosophical hysteria. Anybody feel the same as just before we attacked Iraq? Can you smell the fear in the air?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

A few really big fish are gobbling up the remaining medium-size fish in the pond.

This is always how deregulation plays itself out.

BushCo = Hoover 2.0

[Rohirrim]

Too bad we can't find a single American in a leadership position who is willing to step up to the mic and say, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." I guess we aren't those same people anymore. We have been conditioned to fear everything. It's what makes us so malleable.

[baja]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Too bad we can't find a single American in a leadership position who is willing to step up to the mic and say, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." I guess we aren't those same people anymore. We have been conditioned to fear everything. It's what makes us so malleable.

From now on it is not going to be boring....

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Too bad we can't find a single American in a leadership position who is willing to step up to the mic and say, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." I guess we aren't those same people anymore. We have been conditioned to fear everything. It's what makes us so malleable.

The Congressman form Oregon is stepping up:

DeFazio blasts Treasury bailout

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/storie....a02bb2e4.html

Major props to him.

[Rohirrim]

The curtain of facism always falls to the cry of "restoring order."

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

A Fox to Protect the Henhouse?

Does it really matter which party is in charge when it comes to bailing out the Wall Street hustlers whose shenanigans have bankrupted so many ordinary folks? Not if the Democrats roll over and cede power to the former head of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank at the center of our economic meltdown.

What arrogance for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson--who the year before President Bush appointed him treasury secretary was paid $16.4 million for heading the company that did as much as any to engineer this financial travesty--to now insist we must blindly trust him to solve the problem. Paulson is demanding the power to act with "absolute impunity," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who admonished the treasury chief: "After reading this proposal, it is not only our economy that is at risk, Mr. Secretary, but our Constitution as well."

Clearly, it's a vast improvement to have Dodd in the chairman's seat of the Senate Banking Committee, asking the right questions, rather than his predecessor, Texas Republican Phil Gramm, who presided over the committee in the years when the American economy, long the envy of the world, was viciously sabotaged by radical deregulation legislation.

Gramm, whom Sen. John McCain backed for president in 1996, pushed through the financial market deregulation that has brought the American economy to its knees. Maybe this time Congress won't give the financial moguls everything they want, including a bailout for foreign-owned banks like Swiss-based UBS, where Gramm now hangs out as a very well paid executive when he's not advising the presidential campaign of McCain, his old buddy and partner in crime. Oops, sorry, no crimes were committed because the deregulation laws Gramm pursued and McCain faithfully supported decriminalized the financial scams that have proved so costly.

Just check out the language of Gramm's pet projects, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. By preventing mergers between the various branches of Wall Street, the former act reversed basic Depression-era legislation passed to prevent the sort of collapse we are now experiencing. The latter legitimized the "swap agreements" and other "hybrid instruments" that are at the core of the crisis.

The legislation's "Legal Certainty for Bank Products Act of 2000," Title IV of the law--a law that Gramm snuck in without hearings hours before the Christmas recess--provided Wall Street with an unbridled license to steal. It made certain that financiers could legally get away with a whole new array of financial rip-off schemes.

One of those provisions, summarized by the heading of Title III, ensured the "Legal Certainty for Swap Agreements," which successfully divorced the granters of subprime mortgage loans from any obligation to ever collect on them. That provision of Gramm's law is at the very heart of the problem. But the law went even further, prohibiting regulation of any of the new financial instruments permitted after the financial industry mergers: "No provision of the Commodity Exchange Act shall apply to, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission shall not exercise regulatory authority with respect to, an identified banking product which had not been commonly offered, entered into, or provided in the United States by any bank on or before December 5, 2000. ..."

Even some Republicans on the Senate committee expressed exasperation Monday with the swindles that they had voted for with such enthusiasm in the past, as well as with giving Wall Street yet another blank check. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., condemned Paulson's proposal as an effort to "take Wall Street's pain and spread it to the taxpayers." He added, "It's financial socialism and it's un-American."

He's wrong on that last point, for what is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as "financial fascism." After all, even Hitler never nationalized the Mercedes-Benz company but rather entered into a very profitable partnership with the current car company's corporate ancestor, which made out quite well until Hitler's bubble burst.

Smell a rat if Congress approves the Paulson plan without severely curtailing CEO pay and putting a freeze on the mortgage foreclosures that are threatening to destroy the homes of millions of Americans.

— from Truthdig