Bugsy takes a form of stolen money, which I say is stolen because these banksters knew they were selling mortgages to people who could not keep up with ballooning interest payments yet made huge fees and bonuses off those mortgages in the secondary investment market selling to investors who were lied to and told these collateralized debt obligations were virtually risk free and held the highest ratings by bond raters. Another big fraud.
Fees, bonuses and big sells were all that these high-rolling fraudster bankers cared about. Therefore, the term stolen money is not used loosely. Mortgages that were bundled and wrapped up and sold, or gambled on, a couple times over began to show signs of rot. These Wall Street banks and the spider web tying them to the shadow banking companies that sold the secondary securities began to lose their capital foundations. They went to the Fed hoping that which still remained on their balance sheets could be salvaged and saved from further big losses in value after their mortgages and debt obligations began to default, foreclosure or found abandoned, would be worth something again.
The Wall Streeter Bankster Gangsters were left holding considerably worth-less paper and saw their bank's balance sheets become top heavy and go upside down. Since the banks did not have enough capital to back up their newly acquired losses, and could not sell the once valuable on-paper debt obligations, they ended up going down with the Drano. Now, the richest of Americans are crying and want to be bailed out and have the American people tighten their belts and eat the losses for them so they can keep their lavish lifestyles. Don't you love it!
Our $17 trillion yearly national budget has 1/3 of it being handed over to the Pentagon (44 cents of every dollar), with much of it going toward the money pit called Iraq and Afghanistan, 1/3, it appears, will be handed over to the Wall Street shysters, who now have healthy capital placed magically on their tattered balance sheets so they can lend to each other in order to "creditize" (Did I make this word up?) this nation into a deeper and longer credit debt crisis. Are we not in in enough debt? We have a federal budget deficit approaching $500 billion, and a national debt of $10 trillion. Americans have absolutely no money saved, and their buying power is falling because the Dollar is evaporating in value by the day.
In many cases, these investment banks don't want to lend because they are trying to build up their capital so they have a nice cushion once commercial property defaults and credit default swaps, which I wrote about last week, begin to slap at them like a loose tarp tied up at only one corner as a gale force wind blows in.
Bugsy Bernanke and Paulie Paulson both feel that by unlocking the current credit freeze-up, a $5-6 trillion defrost is all we need to take the country out of recession and back into prosperity. Some are saying only a one trillion dollar thaw will be felt. I guess, that could then be viewed as only pocket change. No country has ever borrowed themselves into prosperity!
So, where do they buy this hallucinogenic Kool-Aid? Are there enough rich slobs out there wanting to buy more stuff? Are there enough rich Wall Streeters to pull us out of recession if they buy an extra beach house and yacht?
We have just seen four airlines roll over dead. Washington Mutual will be laying off 3000 employees and will close 190 of its 336 loan centers. Las Vegas is beginning to fall. 232,000 American jobs have disappeared since January. More lay-offs are in the works. Restaurant, services, and temp jobs are drying up (the last hold out in employment statistics).
Bugsy and Paulie, the monetary mob bosses, are hoping that business will borrow and expand during a time of recession, consumer inflation, jobs losses, and deflating dollar value. Who are these two guys listening to? Could it be a bunch of Republican Regressives who preach that letting the markets do their thing, but without regulation, and of course, with a government-socialized-bailout, is the best cure for such ills?
Dimwitted Bush and his minion of menacing marauders don't really want to do what is needed and will not disappoint the Wall Street mobsters, although they have already sold them out by devaluing the dollar so much that those Americans still holding out for a stable stock market valuation will only cry when they find out that the current Dow Jones figure is not what they think it is. The Regressives are really the Great Kreskin, full of illusions.
Kevin Phillips, wrote in his article, "The Destructive Rise of Big Finance", 4-4-08, www.Alternet.org; www.Huffingtonpost.com, "In fact, phony Washington statistics and warped market measurements make it doubly hard to tell. The Federal Consumer Price Index is already regarded by many Americans as a con job, and the press periodically quotes investors who state their belief that current U.S. inflation is really 6 to 9 percent a year, and not the 2-4 percent the government alleges. I agree. On top of which, because the value of the dollar has dropped so far, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the end of March was not really 12,200, a number barely up from its 11,700 peak in 2000. If you measure the Dow in Swiss francs or euros, two strong currencies, it has already lost some forty percent of its value. Too many Americans live in a dream-world of economic misinformation."
WOW! Does that mean that our Dow is really at 7400 due to the deflationary factors pushing down the value of the Dollar? And Mr. Phillips is a reputable writer and researcher. Have you finally woken up yet?
A barrel of oil is $110 when bought with dollars because that has been the currency used to trade in oil. The reserve currency of choice (dollar) may have reached the end of its life. Yet now, as the dollar deflates, it takes more dollars to buy one barrel of oil. What happens when the world no longer decides to use the dollar to trade in oil because of the deflated value? If we were another currency, that same barrel of oil may only cost $75 or $85.
What happens when the world decides that dollars are not worth having anymore, and countries begin to dump them on the street in auction just to get rid of them? Look out. A depression would sweep over us like a dark cloud just before a tornado.
The Fed is planning to further deflate the dollar on April 29, 2008, when it again lowers its discount interest rate below the current 2.5%. I really cannot see it working. Bugsy, Paulie, and Dimwit's monetary policy should scare us all. Their belief that Americans will begin to miraculously borrow, once again, occurs in children stories from the 1950's. They believe they are the goose that laid the golden egg. But, as we know, it was only a fairy tale.
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A Post script: Attorney General Michael Mukasey revealed a startling fact in a speech he gave around 4-4-08, that the NSA failed to eavesdrop on an Afghan terrorist calling a terrorist in the U.S. prior to 9-11, which may very likely be related to the 9-11 attack! His NSA (Condo Rice) just did not go forward to listen to this key page turner. Now, the 9-11 Commissioners are mum and will not speak about it and will not say if they even were given this information during their investigation!!! This is chilling. Did Dimwit Bush and the Evil Chenster hold back this cover up? Listen to a more expanded discussion of this impeachable, and probably, criminal act on the video or podcast.
