“Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,...every one of these transactions is outrageous.”
So, what would you say to a TARP-receiving Wall St. exec making $800,000 accepting zero dollars in the way of bonuses? You might look at that salary and think that was mighty big of that guy but that you were greatly appreciative just the same of that symbolic gesture considering all the other shenanigans going on with Wall St. bonuses.
Then what would you think if ol' boy in 2009 purchased a 107-year-old limestone carriage house on the upper east side of New York for $13.5 million? You might say that perhaps this guy had some spare change setting between the seat cushions in order to make this purchase. No biggie.
But then what if we told you that instead of his own money, he possibly used that of his wife who along with her girlfriend received $220 million from the Feds for their start-up investment firm Waterfall TALF Opportunity?
Sunshine laws passed last year have thrown the door open and have shed light onto just how dirty the dirty Fed may be. We apparently have two budgets: one that's on the books and the other that's off the books. One with which you are familiar with income via taxes and expenditures via aircraft carriers and Social Security payments and the other that is giving out hundreds of billions in near-interest-free loans only to be lent back to the Treasury Department at 3%.
This whole setup — in which millionaires and billionaires gambled on mountains of dangerous securities, with taxpayers providing the stake and assuming almost all of the risk — is the reason that it’s insanely premature for Wall Street to claim that the bailouts have actually made money for the government. We simply can’t make that determination until the final bill comes in on all the dicey securities we financed during the bailout feeding frenzy.
Ditto for the housing market. What completely freaks us out is that Fannie and Freddie are still holding mountains of toxic assets that have not been allowed to be wrung out of the system. To say the housing market is making a rebound is folly until we unwind the entire mess.
Read the entire article here. And since it will appear in Rolling Stone, remember, it was all the Republicans' fault.
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1 comment:
Ah now Dean...you aren't quite seeing the whole picture ;) Let's go Back to when Clinton [Dem] was in office and signed away the Glass Steagull act which kept Banks from becoming their own brokers and insurance agencies...This gave the FED who is NOT the government but rather OWNS 13 main bank branches in different districts. Each supplies the board with a member and one of those becomes the head of the FED[Chairman]...this gave them incredible power a rather lenient position with no transparency...Tart itself rather came about because the US was in vulnerable position with France and England as much of their $$ was also tied up in the derivative and CDO mess...The emergency meeting before the house vote was in fact pressure from those countries with an *or else*...added to it...loll...the main bank is owned by the Rothchilds'... soooo...thus began the rather out of hand even for the players concerned, domino effect...
~jude/rockingjude projectworldawareness.com
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