At the end of the aeon of Pieces, the zeitgeist is a storm. Wisdom comes from within if we question authority, and our actions determine our identity. In like a lion, out like a lamb, the storm wind blows. Beware Caesar the ides of March are come.
"... shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. "
Mr. Ely said the open-ended nature of the Treasury’s plan could be interpreted to mean that the government was open to acquiring “any asset, anywhere in the world.”
“The question that I am raising — is there any limit?” Mr. Ely said.
In an amazing turn of events the US Congress and Senate have refused to rubber stamp the Bush administrations economic bail out plan for wall street!
I am shocked, I thought all these political fat cats had been bought and paid for years ago. Apparently the out cry from the people screaming to add transparent checks and balances to any $700-Billion bail out plan somehow got through to the narcissistic, corrupt, and ignorant representatives in this election year.
So, WE DID IT. The majority of our voting population, realizing we really have nothing left to loose from a crashing stock market, because we don't own stock, we don't have homes, or good jobs, or anything of real value, like the economic opportunity of upward mobility based upon a just and fair objective competition of individual merit. Just a bleak future, dominated by corporations and crushed by government. So, our only choice pay for the bailout by devaluing the dollar and saddling our children with insurmountable debt far into the future, or watching the stock-market fall and crash, which will level the playing field between the rich and poor, we choose to let them fall!
Now what? I think we need great changes, yes we need new politics, throw the bums out, but this economy still needs to be stabilized with a RATIONAL and JUST Fiscal Plan. I suggest that we follow the Kucinich Doctrine, a complete plan to build transparency and ethics into the system.
Force your congress person to read this plan and implement these new rules if they wish to install a bail out plan: 1) Tell your friends 2) Contact your representatives 3) Support those who are fighting for your interests
insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:
1) Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
2) Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
3) Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down: -- a) resignations of management -- b) givebacks of executive compensation packages -- c) limitations on executive compensation -- d) admission by CEO's of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout
4) Demands for transparencey -- a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down -- b) with respect to Treasury's dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
5) An equity position for the taxpayers -- a) some form of ownership of assets
6) Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
7) A sunset clause on the legislation
8) Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.
9) A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts
10) A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts
And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure.
USE COMMON SENSE! WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE! IF THIS FAILS, WE THE PEOPLE WILL BE ECONOMICALLY EQUAL TO THE WEALTHY ELETE AND THERE WILL BE NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL, LIMITED ONLY BY YOUR ABILITY. IF THIS WORKS, WE WILL HAVE THE REFORMS IN THE SYSTEM WE NEED TO REQUIRE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY, AND THE SYSTEM WILL CONTINUE.
Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.
No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:
"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.
"Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.
"At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.
"Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions." Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.
The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.
And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.
Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?
It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened.
This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!
I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately:
1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.
2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).
When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!
P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.
P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we'll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say "NO!" If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.
The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt "de-leverages."
Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration's growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff?
This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real - not imaginary - growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class.
The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.
The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.
This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed.
In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.
I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:
1) Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
2) Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
3) Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down: --a) resignations of management --b) givebacks of executive compensation packages --c) limitations on executive compensation --d) admission by CEO's of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout
4) Demands for transparency --a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down --b) with respect to Treasury's dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
5) An equity position for the taxpayers --a) some form of ownership of assets
6) Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
7) A sunset clause on the legislation
8) Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.
9) A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts
10) A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts
And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure.
These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow.
UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections The same manipluations of 2004 and 2006 looms over the 2008 election. Sept 25, 5pm & Sept 27, 5pm with Brad Friedman & guest panel Q&A San Diego Film Festival - Gaslamp Theatre - 701 5th Avenue downtown Hosted by Metro San Diego Progressive Democrats (PDA) 619.665.9415 Join us for our October film series, guest speakers and discussions
Hacking Democracy The documentary that Diebold Corp doesn't want you to see...the disturbingly shocking HBO documentary bravely tangles with our nation's ills at the heart of democracy.
Wed Oct 1, 6:30 pm social - 7pm program La Jolla Dem Club, 817 Silverado St, La Jolla 858-752-9544
Mon Oct 13, 7pm Joyce Beers Community Center, Hillcrest shopping center, Vermont near Univ. (next to Trader Joe's) Activist San Diego & TrueVoteSanDiego 858-459-4650
Fri Oct 3, 7:30pm - Joyce Beers Community Center, Hillcrest shopping center, Vermont near Univ. (next to Trader Joe's) Activist San Diego & TrueVoteSanDiego - 858-459-4650
Wed. Oct 15, 6pm - Malcolm X Library, 5148 Market St, Near Euclid - Activist San Diego & TrueVoteSanDiego - for info: Marc Chery 619-527-3405
Fri Oct 17, 7:30pm First Unitarian Universalist Church, 4190 Front St, Hillcrest, opposite UCSD Med Center - Peace & Democracy Action Group 858-459-4650
American Blackout Sat Oct 4, 3pm - Malcolm X Library, 5148 Market St, Near Euclid For info: Marc Chery - 619-527-3405
(Suggested Donation for all Movie Screenings is $5)
This is a long story, but if you have any interest in what's going on in the financial markets, I think you'll find it a more useful analysis than you're likely to find anywhere else.
Without this article, you'll still get value from the video, but with it, you'll REALLY know what's going on better than most people on earth...including financial news reporters.
I encourage you to invest the five minutes it will take to read this. If not, you can skip to the link at the bottom.
*** A short explanation of how we got to where we are
Today's banking crisis is the THIRD trillion dollar plus US-caused financial meltdown in the last twenty years.
Each one of these crises came into being through the same basic mechanism...the fraudulent over-valuing of financial assets by Wall Street - with a "wink and a nod" (and sometimes a lot more) from the White House and Congress.
The fraudulently valued assets stimulate the economy, impart the illusion of health and then, inevitably, the fraud goes too far and the whole house of card comes painfully crashing back to earth.
The three trillion dollar plus frauds were:
Fraud #1: The so-called "Savings and Loan Crisis" of the late 80s
Fraud #2: The so-called "Tech Bubble" of the late 90s
Fraud #3: The so-called "Credit Crisis" of today
*** How the scam works
The mechanism of these frauds is simplicity itself...
...Take a shaky financial asset and blow up its value and then sell as much of it as you can.
In the "Savings and Loan Crisis," the instrument was junk bonds.
In the "Tech Bubble" it was Internet stocks.
In the "Credit Crisis" it was individual mortgages collected into pools and then re-sold to investors.
In each case, normal, well established "bread and butter" financial principles were consciously thrown away by Wall Street with no hint of protest from federal regulators.
Junk bonds caused the Saving and Loan crisis which resulted in the US taking over the assets of hundreds of banks and selling them back over time to the marketplace at fire sale prices.
Junk bonds, which caused the "Savings and Loan Crisis" were shaky bonds that were pumped up by deliberate misrepresentation and what I call "staged dealing."
Bonds get their value from two things: the amount of interest they pay and how safe they are.
"Junk" bonds have to pay higher interest because they are less safe. Therefore, until the "Savings and Loan Crisis," savings and loan banks banks were not allowed by law to buy them and call them assets.
Reagan/Bush changed all this and then a group of Wall Street fraudsters used the new loophole to kick off an orgy of junk bond creation and junk bond selling to banks and insurance companies.
The crooks would deal the junk bonds back and forth amongst themselves thereby establishing their "value" and then they'd sell them to outsiders. The bonds then became "assets" which could be borrowed against and leveraged to buy even more bonds.
When the bonds failed, the banks failed and in stepped the US government to "fix" the problem that it created at the cost of at least one trillion dollars to US tax payers.
Deja vu, eh?
***The "Tech Bubble" dissected
The instrument of fraud in the "Tech Bubble" was Internet stocks, start ups in particular.
A stock gets its value from the underlying company's sales, its growth and its overall prospects for the future.
Pre-tech bubble, companies used to have to prove themselves by being in existence for several years before they could be sold on major exchanges. That standard was thrown away during the tech bubble.
To pump of their values, the companies engaged in "staged dealing" just like the junk bond crooks.
Company #1 would "sell" 20 million dollars in banner ads to Company #2 which would in turn "sell" 20 million in banner ads to Company #1.
In fact, nobody sold anybody anything. Company #2 ran ads for Company #1 and billed it for them. Company #1 ran ads for Company #2 and billed for an equal amount.
These should have been called media trades not sales, but Wall Street was happy to claim them as legitimate cash sales and then use the sales numbers to fraudulently value these companies - many of them totally worthless - in the hundreds of millions and sometimes even the billions.
***The "Credit Crisis" dissected
By now, you see how the scheme works.
It's not complicated at all.
You take near worthless pieces of paper (junk bonds, stock of start up Internet companies, etc.) and declare them to be good as gold.
Then you create as many junk bonds and Internet start up stocks as you get and sell them as fast as you can.
In the case of our current crisis, the instrument of fraud was so-called sub-prime mortgages.
Previously, sub-prime mortgages had very little trading value. Only people in the sub-prime industry itself dealt in them and for good reason. They're tricky to value and packed with financial peril.
But Wall Street changed all that.
Wall Street said: "If we take LOTS of these mortgages and assemble them into large pools and then slice and dice the pools in various ways, we can sell the slices to banks and other investors as AAA paper."
It sounds crazy, doesn't it?
If the underlying pieces of paper are garbage, how does assembling a whole bunch of garbage into one place make it "better?"
It doesn't, of course, and this is a principle even a three year old child can understand.
But greed and the need to pump up a shaky economy for propaganda purposes are two very strong motivators.
Banks created these mortgage pools, sold them to each other, and they by virtue of these "staged sales" declared them valuable.
Do you recognize the pattern now?
If you do, then you are now smarter than all the assembled j@ck@sses who do financial reporting because they apparently can't - or won't.
This is the THIRD trillion-dollar plus fraud driven financial meltdown in twenty years and apparently no one in the financial news media can see how it happened.
***But there's more...
Junk bonds were mass manufactured as fast as the crooks could invent them. Ditto for Internet stocks.
But how did hundreds of billions of dollars worth of "toxic" mortgages suddenly come into being?
Why did the mortgage industry change its lending standards so radically and so suddenly to make their creation possible?
And why did real estate lending regulators in all 50 states - because real estate lending is a STATE-level issue not a federal - go along with it?
Here's where it gets very interesting...
The fact is state-level lending regulators were VERY concerned about what was going on. They have been for years.
And they not only expressed their concern clearly, they also took SERIOUS concerted legal action to stop lenders from making bad real estate loans to their citizens.
(Most of the sub-prime loans in the news so much today were designed to screw the people who borrowed the money and can rightly be called "predatory" loans.)
Guess who stopped the states from enforcing their own time-proven real estate lending laws and thus created the raw material that made the current "Credit Crisis" possible?
*** The trillion dollar plus question
If you're a US taxpayer, you're going to pay for this fraud so you might as well know who did it to you.
His initials are GB.
You know him well.
But perhaps more interesting is the name of the person who single-handedly rallied first state attorneys general and then fellow governors to fight the creation of these loans and who in the process became Public Enemy #1 to the Bush Administration...
If you follow "silly" US political scandals, you'll recognize his name instantly when you hear it.
And you will *finally* understand why he was quickly and permanently assassinated politically earlier this year.
Had ES been allowed to "live," he would have been in position to remind everyone every day of who made the current meltdown possible.
Instead, he was silenced very effectively. Not with a bullet in the back of the head, but the net effect was just the same.
So effective was his assassination that no one can even
mention his name in connection with today's crisis without risking ridicule, or worse.
Last note:
The crisis this fraud has created is *exponentially* bigger than the S & L and Tech Bubble combined.
It's not going to be resolved by a quick "patch up" and will likely have the same impact on the current generation that the depression of the 1930s had on its parents, grandparents and great grandparents.
Top Secret America Dana Priest
War is a LIE David Swanson
Daybreak David Swanson
9-11 - by Noam Chomsky
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (American Empire Project) - by Noam Chomsky
Media Control, Second Ed. - By Noam Chomsky
Against All Enemies
FIASCO - Blood in the Water on Wall Street, by Frank Partnoy
The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President (Paperback)
by Vincent Bugliosi (Author), Molly Ivins (Foreword), Gerry Spence (Author)
Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order (Paperback)
by Mark Crispin Miller (Author)
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Hardcover)
by Andrew Bacevich (Author)
The Dark Side - Jane Mayer
Find out about "Learned Helplessness"
Standard Operating Procedure
Right is Wrong - Ariana Huffington
The Post American World
The Revolution: A Manifesto - Ron Paul
What Happened - Scott McClellan
Fire-Breathing Liberal - Robert Wexler
Blackwater: Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill
Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian
“Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman” by Mary Tillman
Imperial Life inside the Emerald City - Rajiv Chandrasekaran
