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Ben Bernanke Must be Stopped: A Call For Action (Sample Senate Letter Enclosed; Don't Forget To Sign Bernie Sanders Petition) - Home - The Daily Bail
By Mark McHugh
The pending reappointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve is the non-story of the Century, and I find this terrifying. Propaganda of his alleged “success” has been crammed in every orifice of the American people by the rich and shameless (yet relatively few believe it). This is truly the time for action, unless you really enjoy Tea-partying ’til you puke. I’m asking every American to demand that their Senators stand up and oppose the nomination. Our future depends on it.
Contact your Senator
Sign Bernie Sanders' Petition To Prevent Bernanke's Reappointment >>
This Is Where Goldman Can Stick Their Guns (PHOTO) - Home - The Daily Bail
Goldman Sachs employees are buying up hand guns to protect themselves from the angry throngs of peasants (taxpayers) with pitchforks. This is clipped from a Bloomberg article! (Good videos)
excerpt: Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”
Torn Curtain
There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.
This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.
The 25 Billion Dollar Secret: The NY Fed, Goldman & The AIG Cover-Up (GS, AIG)
WOW! Everyday brings new revelations. We've been robbed!
excerpt: Now we know: Geithner and Friedman interceded on behalf of Goldman and Wall Street (Merrill received $6.2 billion, Societe General - a whopping $16.5 billion) to deliver a stealth bailout, one that wouldn't need Congressional approval, and even better wouldn't require the counterparties to pay any of it back NOR would it require that they issue shares, warrants or any other instrument to AIG (taxpayers) in return for more than $32 billion in free money.
In any other time, a sitting Treasury Secretary who interceded on behalf of Wall Street to screw taxpayers out of tens of billions, would not be sitting long. But Democrats control both the House and Senate, so there are no investiagtions (Issa's letter aside). Traditional media is content not to rock the boat for President Banks Obama lest they be shunned by their peers, and ultimately, 99% of TV and print journalists don't understand the issues well enough to complain with any conviciton, especially against the merry backdrop of the Dow rising and their deflated 401ks beginning to show life.
They fall prey to fear and weakly submit to duplicitous hyperbole (Paulson threatening martial law and blood in the streets), when they should instead be consulting with the objective, critical voices who foresaw the crisis and were prepared with alternative solutions when it finally came (Stiglitz said instead of TARP, create new banks).
A pox on Congress, President Banks Obama, Bush, Paulson, Friedman, Bernanke and Geithner (plus Greenspan and Rubin). You may have gotten away with it for now, but I would wager there are a few million of us, roughly, who do understand everything that went down last Fall, and we're not amused. We're not just going to let this one pass, and we will not stop filling the vast interweb with the truth (and our distaste and vitriol for your wretched souls) day after day, week after week, all over message boards and finance blogs, until justice is served.
The Right Way To Reform Wall Street: Let Stupid Firms Fail!
Let stupid firms fail.
We need to get back to that.
Yes, the fact that the "stupid firms" this time around included most of Wall Street shows that special rules of financial bankruptcy should apply so the whole system doesn't collapse. But the firms need to be allowed to fail.
What should the special rules of financial bankruptcy be?
managements should be tossed
compensation contracts and other liabilities should be torn up,
bonus pools should be zeroed until the firms return to annual profitability
equity and preferred holders should be wiped out, and
junior bondholders should get a major haircut through the immediate, forced conversion of debt to equity.
All of this should happen not over years in the courts, but overnight--in the manner in which the FDIC seizes failing banks.
In such proceedings, all of Wall Street's idiocy enablers will lose their shirts: The folks who work the at the firms, the folks who lend money to the firms, the folks who invest in the firms and trust the firms' managements to be something other than morons.
Losing your shirt generally has a sobering effect on decision-making. As long as managers, lenders, and shareholders know they will lose their shirts, the next generation of Wall Street enablers will likely be far more careful and demanding than their predecessors, at least for a little while (and don't hallucinate that the Fed's new policy is anything other than temporary).
Americans Have Been Taken Hostage | Dylan Ratigan
A system where bank lobbyists have been spending in record numbers to make sure it stays that way.
A system that corrupts the most basic principles of competition and fair play, principles upon which this country was built.
It is a system that so far has forced the taxpayer to provide the banks with the use of $14 trillion from the Federal Reserve, much of the $7 trillion outstanding at the US Treasury and $2.3 trillion at the FDIC.
A system partially built by the very people who currently advise our President, run our Treasury Department and are charged with its reform.
And most stunningly -- it is a system that no one in our government has yet made any effort to fundamentally change.
Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.
this article features a complete break down of where the money went!!!!
New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.
The Quiet Coup: America’s Oligarchs and the Financial Crisis - The Atlantic (May 2009)
Incredible article by Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He puts the focus of the financial crisis on the shoulders of a powerful and politically influential group he calls the "financial oligarchs". I caught Simon on Charlie Rose, and hunted down his article. This is a must read. Simon manages to put everything into the larger context of how things work in this world. Some interesting clips:
<br><br>
"....Of course, the U.S. is unique. And just as we have the world's most advanced economy, military, and technology, we also have its most advanced oligarchy.\n\nIn a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption-envelopes stuffed with $100 bills-is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding."<br><br>
"Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital-a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America's position in the world."<br><br>
<b>conclusion:</b><br>
"....Our future could be one in which continued tumult feeds the looting of the financial system, and we talk more and more about exactly
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