The U.S. Con Game Continues

The United States is engaged in a giant con game. President Obama continues to tell Americans, as he stump-speaks around the nation, that he is doing everything he can to bring back employment. This is a giant con game. This is not true. It is a distraction from what is exactly happening.

It is becoming more and more accepted by experts that another major recession is heading our way. We had a stimulus but it has now begun to fizzle and did not jumpstart our economy. It was just too small, and was not followed by additional stimulus packages at various intervals. Our Congress only debates the merits or lack thereof, but did not take it upon themselves to design and implement stimulus packages to further feed the economy with jobs and wages.

Instead, what we have are more and more workers falling off the edge who are no longer included in the jobless figures. Millions of Americans are unemployed, and millions more are underemployed. And, there are millions of unemployed workers no longer being counted. There are 400,000 more added to the list of No-Longer-Being-Counted. As more workers find their wages buying less than they bought last month and the months before, they will become a measured consumer pull-back of non-essential purchases. This will slow businesses, and even shut them down. This will be a significant drop in demand, and demand is what stimulates the economy, and increases the GDP. That will lead to more unemployed workers, more foreclosures, fewer homes purchases and an economy slipping deeper into recession.

The Repugnicons and Democons are preaching austerity to the victims of the economic abusers—the corporate capitalistic elite, who have drained our real economy of liquidity and capital in order to replenish their balance sheets that are attached to trillions of dollars of underwater derivatives, which they have not unwound and remain as a toxic risk upon the economy.

The Con Game’s bottom line is that both Congress and Barack Obama talk the talk but are failing to walk the walk with any credibility. There is absolutely no reality to their recovery scenario. They have failed to move fast enough to prevent it from really taking hold. They have allowed the predatory abusive financial rapists from giving restitution to their real economy victims. The way this should have been done was for Congress to have forced the TARPed and bailed out investment bankstas to take their profits and funnel it back into the real economy through available lending, which would have been the needed private sector stimulus to bring forth jobs and wages. But no, Congress has allowed the Financial Reform bill to end up as becoming a mediocre fix. Derivatives are still allowed to exist without transparency or traded on an open exchange, and left within the confines of the banksta’s grasp and not moved into a separate facility. In addition, they will allow the top 6 financial investment bankstas to remain TBTF. The TBTF banks will eventually weaken whereby one or more will require another bailout.

David Michael Green summed it up in his piece, “How That Recessioney Thing Working Out For Ya?”. “Here’s the story in a nutshell: A far-right predatory over-class has spent the last thirty years undoing the hard-fought gains of the mid-twentieth century, which had produced a robust middle class [with] vastly more economic and social justice in America than the country had ever known before. These regressives used every kind of deceit imaginable to persuade unsophisticated voters to choose candidates whose real agenda was to assist their plutocratic puppetmasters in fleecing the very same people who voted for them.

Such candidates ran on issues like the death penalty, immigration, bogus wars, gay marriage, and abortion. But what they really were about as legislators was exporting jobs to where workers are dirt cheap and politically neutered, crashing organized labor, shifting the tax burden onto the mass public, deregulating industry to allow unhindered profit-taking on the upside and socialized public responsibility for risk on the downside, and locking in a Supreme Court majority that would never blanch at even the most outrageous rulings enhancing corporate power in American society.”

Economics professor Michael Hudson in his piece “EU Today, US Tomorrow Europe’s Fiscal Dystropia: The New Austerity, when writing about Greece and Europe’s economic crisis and austerity programs, wrote “…creditors can get paid only at the economy’s expense. The remaining stimulus must go to them, not capital investment, employment, or social spending.” This sounds like the US today.

He went on to say that “a balanced budget in an economic downturn means shrinkage of the private sector.” “The New Fiscal Conservatism aims to corral all countries to scale back social spending in order to “stabilize” economies by a balanced budget. This is to be achieved by impoverishing labor, slashing wages, reducing social spending and rolling back the clock to the good old class war [days] as it flourished before the Progressive Era.” “The problem is that there is not enough economic surplus available to pay the financial sector on its bad loans while also paying pensions and social security. Something has to give. The commission is to provide a cover story for a revived Rubinomics, this time aimed not at the former Soviet Union but here at home. Its aim is to scale back Social Security, while reviving George Bush’s aborted privatization plan to send FICA paycheck withholding[s] into the stock market—that is, into the hands of money managers to stick into an array of junk financial packages designed to skim off labor’s savings.”

“What really is causing the financial and fiscal squeeze, of course, in the fact that government funding is now needed to compensate the financial sector for what promises to be year after year of losses as loans go bad in economies that are all loaned up and sinking into negative equity.”

Therefore, we are being conned into believing that the economy is in a slow paced recovery, when it is not true, since the financial sector has been bathed in the nation’s wealth at the expense of taxpayers and the real economy.

The administration continues their con game as BP continues to kill the Gulf of Mexico.

The world is engaging us into accepting their big con game. It was revealed, during the Canadian-Toronto G-20 summit that police disguised as Black Bloc anarchists were destroying property so their real police comrades could move in and make arrests. BO has touted great changes coming in the new financial reform bill, while derivatives, which were alchemized in Shadow Banks, can still go forward. Too many compromises spoiled the stew.

The corporate capitalistic oligarchs are in control. BP had stated that the Macondo well, back before it exploded, had 50 million barrels down in the cavern. At the rate it has been erupting, that well should have gone dry. Therefore, these oligarchs of oil have no idea how to accurately measure a damn thing, how to clean up an eruption let alone a large spill, or how to safely engineer a deep water drilling project. All they care about is cutting corners for profits and shareholders.

If a developer built homes that systematically collapsed months after the owners moved in, the developer would be arrested. Yet, Donald Vidrine, BP’s well site leader aboard the Deepwater Horizon well, has been placed on leave-at home. Why isn't this guy being questioned in a jail cell? It has been reported that BP appears to be covering oil-covered beaches with new sand in order to sweep the oil under their sand “rugs”.

We can thank the Oilygarchs, Ken Salazar, the MMS, BP-of course, Bush-Cheney, and Donald Vidrine, along with Barack Obama, as well as all the Oilybots running around who keep wanting to drill-baby-drill in the gulf without a deepwater drilling moratorium in order to make darn sure that any drilling is done right, and with transparency and competent regulators. Yet, what is now coming forward is that arsenic is rising to dangerous levels in the gulf because oil in the water keeps the natural arsenic levels from being filtered out. This could impact the added dangers filling up the Gulf of Mexico, and, in the future, as the gulf ocean drift currents head into the Atlantic Ocean contaminating the Atlantic marine life and beaches.

The extremely toxic dispersant, Corexit, is horribly dangerous!!! If it gets on your skin, it goes right THROUGH the skin. It ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding and liver and kidney damage! All it has to do is splash on you and you can experience headaches lasting weeks, heart palpitations, muscle spasms, and even, bleeding from the rectum. Corexit can take the oil right into your organs!

The government and hired guns flying planes that are spraying Corexit dispersant in the heat of the night, is very likely to drift onto the land surrounding the shore, as well as kill the Gulf of Mexico’s marine life. This Corexit might actually be getting on the things you touch, the air you breathe, the soil you work with in your garden, if you experience the ocean air currents drifting over head.

This Corexit prevents oils from bonding to itself. We are made up of oils, therefore, Corexit, if it penetrates your body, will keep YOUR oils from bonding to itself, ie, red blood cells. This is a BPFrankenstein experiment with long term dangers that are being kept from the American people.

This is, no doubt, why there is a military lockdown in the effected zones, yet we are all kept from this information. And, obviously, the workers who are not allowed to dress in Hazmat suits don’t know, either. There is a blackout of real information.

Now, the Obama administration has turned the Gulf into a war zone restricting access to reporters, filmmakers, and others arresting “violators” who want to report on this horrendous story and the worst oil spill in America’s history. The transparency promised by Obama has turned into the secrecy policies of LilBoyBush and Cheney.

Another con job is the retention of our current Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar who, in April 2009, “allowed the MMS [Mineral Management Service] to approve—with no environmental review—the BP drilling operation that exploded on April 20, 2010 killing 11 workers and pouring millions of gallons of oil [and methane gas] into the Gulf of Mexico.”

Here is more from the Firedoglake piece written by Jacob Freeze “Obama Could Have Prevented the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: “ PB submitted the drilling plan to the MMS on March 10, 2009. Rather than subject the plan to a detailed environmental review before approving it as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, the agency declared the plan to be “categorically excluded” from environmental analysis because it posed virtually no chance of harming the environment.”

More con jobbing went on at the Canadian-Toronto G-20 as the oligarch’s chief executive officers-- the world leaders of the various nations attending-- discussed how to screw the victims who were caught in the destructive webs of the financial predator spiders as they sucked the wealth out of the wallets of working people. They substituted the word screw with austerity.

With European austerity, so goes the private sector exports produced in the US. Then, so goes the US private sector economy, since there will be fewer peoples available to purchase what they produce.

What appears to exist is the preservation of Reaganomics. The neo-liberal, laissez-faire trickle down corporate oligarchy model of economics is what must be preserved proclaimed the financial crime syndicate bosses from within the White House and throughout the G20 conferences.

Nothing is really going to change for a long time as the whole economic cloth begins to tear. All that is being done is the allocation of needles and threads to try and patch it up. But the yarns are threadbare and lack the strength to hold and repair the economic cloth before it rips and shreds again and again.

The problem remaining is that many Americans would rather trouble themselves with what type of snacks to eat while watching Reality Television. The austerity iron fist is coming our way, even during prime time broadcasts, or should I say programming. It is about programming Americans to accept what they innately know not to be true to actually be true for them.

The mediocre health care bill and the financial reform bill are basically about giving Americans a slow dose of valium-like reforms. Just shut up and take this medicine. It won't really work too well but it is good for ya. Youbetcha!

It is not about change but about Reaganomics, trickle down, laissez-faire capitalism for the elite who use the government to further their wealth as they sacrifice the real economy, jobs, employment, opportunities, middle class personal and home wealth values.

And, at the same time the oil oligarchs had known the dangers of drilling off of the Louisiana coastline because of the mega-amounts of methane gas they had detected at the drilling site, as well as for miles around the site, since it had been seeping along with the oil from the sea floor. Was this a planned demolition of the Gulf of Mexico, killing it all for themselves? Possibly.

The President could care less what the people think. That was clear after he took office and moved 180 degrees from his semi-populist message during the campaign.

It IS all about jobs, President Stupid. Yes. It IS all about jobs. Stop conning us into believing you are doing everything you can to bring back jobs. No you are not! But this president is committed to listening to the Reaganomic neoliberals who sold out our jobs, as they did the Soviet Union economy under Robert Rubin, and moved US jobs elsewhere making the US the world's largest debtor nation and importer of finished goods and exporter of raw materials.

When austerity hits the US working classes, and the Eurozone, there goes even more jobs. As Americans have to live on even fewer dollars, there will be fewer shoppers, then there will be fewer workers serving the shoppers, and fewer businesses as a result of fewer consumers frequenting those businesses; and then, there will be fewer tax dollars entering the local school districts, local community budgets, state treasuries, and the federal treasury.

Professor Paul Krugman is very likely correct when he speaks of another depression heading our way.

As the corporate capitalistic financial elite robbed Americans of good jobs by outsourcing them to countries that offered cheap laborers, they turned skilled organized U.S laborers into janitors and service workers reducing their incomes while pushing them into becoming heavier debtors. Now the same thing is happening as a result of BP’s incompetence and criminal negligence. They are turning independent fisherman, guide boat operators, and others working independently in the business of fishing, seaside recreation, and the seaside way of life into service workers controlled by the corporate elite as they persist in turning the nation into a feudalistic country.

Barack Obama and the Congress are killing America. There are legislative bills, such as the financial reform bill, that are only about making it appear that there is real reform coming. The Geithner Spin is in! But the fact is that the investment banking syndicate is still allowed to brew up more derivatives through their shadow alchemy programs. Full transparency is not allowed.

This is more of the same garbage we had beginning in 2000. But now, the world is on fire, the Gulf is drowning, and working people are sinking.

thanks for reading, jerry

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

The 50 Ugliest Facts About the Economy

Dylan Ratigan Explains the Goldman Sachs Fraud Scheme

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Financial Smoking Gun--Indict Geithner and Bernanke!

Since the mortgage meltdown occurred, many bloggers and reporters have known that the financial system was rigged to allow the fabricated fraud to go forward without any serious scrutiny, supervision, accountability, regulation, or transparency over what has been called “financial innovations”, in other words, fraudulent derivatives and securities, as well as credit default swaps, which established the marketplace as a revolving Wall Street casino establishment betting on something, but then, without notifying the “something”, betting that the “something” will fail.

What has come forward by such first rate reporters-bloggers-analysts, such as Michael Whitney, Karl Denninger, and the people at ZeroHedge, and explained in the television media by such personalities as Dylan Ratigan and Eliot Spitzer, Lehman Brothers appears to have engaged in fraud when it was still an investment banking institution.

Simon Johnson wrote in his piece “Senator Kaufman: Fraud Still at the Heart of Wall Street”, “He [Senator Kaufman-D.DE, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee] goes after Lehman -- with its infamous Repo 105 -- as well as the other entities potentially implicated in those transactions, including Ernst and Young (Lehman's auditors). This is the low hanging fruit -- but have you heard even a squeak from the White House or anyone else in the country's putative leadership on this issue?” Where is President Obama? Where is your outrage, sir? Where is the Change We Can Believe In? Is it in a Goldman Sachs bank account? Is it in your reelection campaign fundraising account over at Bank of America located at 3401 Connecticut Avenue NW?

I believe Michael Whitney coined the term “a planned demolition” when describing what the Too-Big-To-Fail financial banking investment institutions were doing to the economy as they performed their mortgage magic mirages upon the American people as they duped them into buying homes they couldn’t afford, with no money down, and no analysis of the buyer’s financial ability to pay. And, what went along with that was a bet that they couldn’t pay at some point down the line. From there, home prices grew in their asset values and formed a massive bubble that eventually exploded.

Michael Whitney wrote in his piece, 3-15-10, “Lehman Brothers Scandal Rocks the Fed”, “After a year-long investigation, court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas has produced a deadly 2,200 page report which details the activities that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The report is a keg of dynamite.”

We might say that this just could be the smoking gun, the mushroom cloud that erupted out of the volcanic rubble left by the toxic mortgage’s magma meltdown brought to all us by capitalism gone bad as designed by Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timmy Geithner—the Four Financial Fustian Fiends, or the Four-Squared Fleecing Fools.

I have been calling the TBTF syndicate a financial crime syndicate with Bernanke and Geithner as the mobster’s governmentally appointed financial operating field generals doing what is necessary to make sure that the Federal Reserve cranks out cash to them through its Quantative Easing operation keeping the failed mega-investment banks saturated with liquidity.

This appears to be a full-blown conspiracy to dupe the Congress, American people and the world to believe that QE was designed to infuse the investment banks with taxpayer cash in order to loosen up the credit markets and bring the economy back on-line after being shut down. April Fools!!!

Written in Naked Capitalism, by Professor L. Randall Wray, “Timmy-Gate: Did Geithner Help Hide Lehman Fraud”, “Now we find that Geithner’s NYFed supported Lehman’s efforts to conceal the extent of its problems. Not only did the NYFed fail to blow the whistle on flagrant accounting tricks, it also helped to hide Lehman’s illiquid assets on the Fed’s balance sheet to make its position look better…it continued to take trash off the books of Lehman right up to the bitter end, helping perpetuate the fraud that was designed to maintain the pretense that Lehman was not massively insolvent.” “In terms of dollar costs to the government, this is surely the biggest scandal in US history.”

Professor Wray continued: The abuse was so flagrant that no US law firm would sign off on the practice, fearing that creditors and stockholders would have grounds for lawsuits on the basis that this caused a “material misrepresentation” of Lehman’s financial statements.”

As I have said before, why isn’t the RICO statute being dusted off and charges slapped down into the hands of former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld, Fed Chairman Bernanke, and Tim Geithner, who was president of the New York Federal Reserve at the time when he should have been regulating LB. It appears that these three were engaged in the cover-up of Lehman Brothers worthless capital, which Fuld was using to borrow from other banks through what is called Repo-105. This is like a pawnbroker operation between investment banks. You give up some collateral that has market value, and in return, you get and equal value of cash to use for a very short term period of time, with the guarantee that you will pay it back soon, and reclaim your collateral.

But what was happening was Lehman was using worthless collateral and no one at the central bank, or the NYFed made Fuld and his underlings accountable for this shell game, yet it appears the NYFed knew about it and kept it from the investing public!!

Even though a New York Fed spokesman said the collateral accepted from Lehman was up-to-snuff, Lehman ended up failing two stress tests performed by the NYFed in order to determine if the collateral had real market value.

You might say that the New York Fed Outlet Store was pumping up the Lehman Brothers brand of tires, only to find they wouldn’t hold air, yet sold them to unsuspecting buyers without letting them know that in just about 10 miles, the tires would go flat.

Michael Whitney wrote that “[t]his is the huge scandal: [there were] collusive government officials who operate[d] as de facto agents for an industry saturated with corruption and conflicts of interest. [There was a conniving cover-up] of Lehman’s true position because he [Fuld] doesn’t work for the 10 million people who are now standing in unemployment lines, or the 35 million people who are now on food stamps, or the 6 million people who have lost their homes to foreclosure, or the hundreds of millions of people who have seen the home equity evaporate, their retirement funds plunge and their hopes for the future dashed so that a handful of insatiable landsharks could fatten their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.”

“Today, there is only one market for junk: the Federal Reserve, which has lent $1.3 trillion in cash for trash, no questions asked. This amount exceeds the forecast[ed] Obama medical [health] care plan for the decade. No money for health insurance, but all for the junk-mortgage lenders.” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, Whitney article)

Rave-on Michael Whitney! Beautifully said!!!

Mr. Whitney continues: “Is there really any doubt that Tim Geithner at the New York Fed, or Bernanke knew that Lehman was trading its junk assets to finance its ongoing operations? Doesn’t that in-itself constitute a cover up or [an “intentional” mislead[ing of] investors? And, if Lehman was exchanging garbage to feign solvency, then it seems likely that the other investment giants were engaged in the same type of charade. (Which implies that the rating agencies were culpable, as well.)”

Mr. Whitney had an email exchange with the brilliant, and former Wall Street economist, Professor Michael Hudson, who put this all into perspective. “If investigators can prove that the Fed exchanged US treasuries for MBS [Mortgage-Backed Securities] and other toxic assets that they knew were worth-less than the amount they provided via short-term loans (repos), then it is reasonable to assume that Bernanke’s quantative easing (QE) program operated under the same guidelines. That means, that the $1.25T QE program-which was supposed to extend credit to consumers and businesses—was actually a scam designed to transfer a gigantic load of capital to the very people who gamed the system and precipitated the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. [Therefore, w]ithout question, that misallocation of capital has deepened the recession and sent unemployment skyrocketing.”

So, the big question now is what is President Obama going to do about this smoking gun, this mushroom cloud of information? Will he pull the curtain from behind the stage revealing the fraudsters that have engaged in a possible conspiracy against the United States in order “to transfer a gigantic load of capital to the very people who gamed the system”?

The Time Magazine’s Man Of The Year, and his side-kick dummy may actually be traitors, at the most, and, at the least, small fish mobster field generals who engaged in a conspiracy to perform criminal negligence. What would Joe McCarthy say about this one?

Thanks for reading, jerry

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

The Toyota Metaphor

After 50 years of growing a corporation, a brand, a reputation, Toyota went down. It went down rather quickly, but began to trip over its feet several months ago, and some might rightfully say years ago. Toyota became the most respected name in automotive manufacturing. Quality and reliability were its first names.

It went down due to continued outsourcing of its parts, lack of quality control, and possibly, over expansion. It began to over-plant its fields stripping the soil of its vital nutrients. Instead of manufacturing its own parts, it outsourced them to places where they were far from the corporation’s laboratories. They fell from grace because of a sticky gas pedal. Several months ago, its flagship brand, Lexus, rolled a car off its line, and into the hands of an unsuspecting owner who, along with two others, met their death because the gas pedal got stuck against the floor.

At first, the cause was said to be from the floor mat, so floor mats were recalled and modified. But the problem persisted. It got to the point where around 8 of Toyota’s brands were suspended from sales. Dealers were freaked out that they would be risking defaults on their loans they made to obtain cars. Mortgages on dealership buildings were at risk of defaults, too.

Consumers were trading in their Toyotas for models not at risk of a sticky pedal. Consumers were over-reacting and began to panic over what the company had not figured out. This is America. The land of the panicked, and home of the over-reacted. Be afraid!!! Be afraid of the sticky gas pedal. We must have our solutions right this damn minute. There is no time to waste. We want it now. Keep government out of my Medicare!

Toyota worked day and night with the gas pedal manufacturer once they realized the US consumer was ready to storm the dealerships and surround them with their Camrys, Corollas, Tacomas, and more. It was starting to get primitive, and looking like the cavalry surrounding the enemy. “Keep government out of my Medicare”, I heard confused, flustered and angry Teabaggers yelling out at the local Toyota service department representatives.

There were signs with “Obama” crossed out reading “Toyotacare: Seniors will be shovel ready!” I guess that meant they were ready to bury their Toyota. Here is another sign reading “Seems like Toyota (liberals crossed out) can sell (dish crossed out) it out, but can’t take it back. (Democrat and Republican crossed out) Toyota, Chevy, Chrysler: same sh*t different heap (pile crossed out).”

I guess I would have to say to anyone who is still driving their Toyota and worried, drive carefully!!! Drive more defensively. And drive with caution and with due diligence that at any moment you might have to shove it into neutral, pull it over, and cut the engine. Machines do screw up. There is no getting around it.

I find it a bit funny that Ray LaHood, President Obama’s transportation secretary, saying Toyota was a “little safety deaf” because it dragged its feet over its gas pedal problem. In this AP interview story titled “LaHood says Toyota slow to respond”:

"They should have taken it seriously from the very beginning when we first started discussing it with them," LaHood told AP. "Maybe they were a little safety deaf."

 AP wrote, LaHood also said the government was considering civil penalties for Toyota over its handling of the recalls but declined to elaborate. Sales fell 16 percent in January, hurt by Toyota's decision to halt sales while it sorted out a fix for problems with faulty gas pedals. Most other automakers reported sales gains for the month as the broader industry continued to show signs of improvement.

That problem prompted the company to recall 2.3 million vehicles two weeks ago in the United States. In October, Toyota recalled more than 4 million vehicles to replace floor mats that were suspected of causing accelerators to get stuck, leading to crashes. The recall has since grown to more than 5 million vehicles. Toyota has announced a separate fix for that problem, and parts for that repair are expected to arrive at dealerships beginning later this week. Beginning in 2003, the government conducted several investigations into reports of unwanted acceleration involving Toyota vehicles but failed to find any evidence that the vehicles were defective. When the government probed reports of floor mats in Lexus vehicles jamming gas pedals, Toyota said there was "no possibility of pedal interference" with the floor mats if they were placed properly and secured.

But a government survey of Lexus owners found dozens of reports of sudden acceleration and evidence that in some crashes owners had pressed hard on the brakes but failed to stop the vehicles. The investigation led Toyota to recall an accessory all-weather floor mat for 55,000 Lexus vehicles in September 2007.

The problems grew last August when a California Highway Patrol officer and three family members were killed in a high-speed crash aboard a 2009 Lexus ES350. The Lexus hit speeds exceeding 120 mph, struck a sport utility vehicle, launched off an embankment, rolled several times and burst into flames as a family member called 911.

Toyota hopes a small steel insert the size of a postage stamp will solve problems with friction that are blamed for the potential glitch. Dealers said they expected to receive parts for the fix starting Wednesday. LaHood said the Toyota recalls "may be the most serious safety issue that we have faced here at DOT" during his tenure. "This is a big deal, this is a big safety issue," LaHood said. (End)

Toyota was legally required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to stop selling the cars that were at risk of gas pedal failure.

Wow! If only Goldman Sachs were told by the Treasury to stop selling securities and derivatives until they reduced their leveraging, and held more capital reserves before selling a single at-risk investment, and required all transactions be made in the open market then our president might have some sharper teeth when he bites back today!

Now, if only George W. Bush and President Obama had handled this Toyota incident in the same way as our economy, maybe the economy would be running safer and smoother.

Ray LaHood claimed this mechanical failure was a big deal and a big safety issue. Well, I would say that so was the economic and financial hijacking of our economy by the banking mobsters, such as Goldman Sachs, and AIG, Bank of America, and Wachovia, and the rest of the ‘too-big-to-failure’ bankstas.

But our rescue of the economic “big deal” was handled not for the consumer and the middle class investor saving for retirement, but for the richest 1% of the corporate elite, or the ‘corporate totalitelites’. Did the government tell the Bankstas to go out and find their own fix; to find their own financing? No. The fix was in for them. Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Bush, and Tim Geithner, and now Obama handed them the crazy glue in the form of TARP, and other Treasury and Federal Reserve bailouts totaling a support structure of $23 trillion, and Senators Chris Dodd and Barney Frank’s Senate Banking Committee have now agreed to offer another $4T if they need another bailout.

Now, Paul Volcker has made a strong recommendation to President Obama how to fix his “broken gas pedal problem” by, once again, separating out banks from investment houses and creating regulation that works. But, Geithner seems to be saying that is a bad idea and will cause a storm in the financial markets, even though that is what caused it in the first place, and the markets have been rallying because there are no regulations to speak of.

LaHood says the Toyota sticking gas pedal incident is the most serious safety issue seen at DOT. How about we rephrase that and say that the mega-banks feeding from the public trough, not abiding by government regulations, buying Congressional legislators and Bush43 to make laws that assisted their looting process, being over-leveraged, and under-capitalized during the time when they were selling fake securities to unknowing “Johns” who were caught with their pants down, while making huge piles of billions of dollars as they engaged in the destruction of the Real Economy by sending investment capital overseas to build Chinese manufacturing plants so as to make cheap stuff they could then export back to the unemployed American worker. 

Wow, Ray LaHood, wouldn’t you say that what I just described out-does ya? How about that what I just described has ended up being the biggest national security issue to face the US government?

Maybe the fix would have been a bit more complex that a postage stamp piece of metal, but just as you had gone over to Japan to express your concern on behalf of the American consumer, had our government leaders went into the offices of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and the other banksta CEO mobsters and told them that they were responsible for their own fixing so that the consumer would be safe and protected, otherwise they would have to go into bankruptcy court, and the FDIC would then step in break up the bloated behemoths into smaller pieces as the government protected the consumer’s investments. Then an investigation into possible crimes would then proceed.

This did not happen. Instead, Geithner, Bernanke, and Paulson made fabulous deals with these bankstas protecting their wealth and balance sheets, as well as the opportunities to pay huge bonuses during a time of economic hardship. Oh well. Just Keep Government Out Of My Medicare. That is all I want!!!

Just as millions of consumers were at risk of death and/or injury from the gas pedal defects, more Americans were taken down by the financial banking mobsters, to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars, than by this single car company, and the reverberations worldwide were much more powerful than aftershocks, yet our government reacted with more force and hyper-diligence to protect the consumer from risk of harm caused by a sticky gas pedal than we have seen over what many have coined the Second Depression.

Thanks Ray LaHood for making it clear that Toyota has been more important to consumers than this economic recession. I appreciate it, and feel better already.

So, is my Medicare looking freedom-like yet?

Thanks for reading, jerry

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

The U.S. Supreme Court Majority Are Enemy Combatants!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There clearly is a war in America and it has officially been declared by the United States Supreme Court with their decision to grant corporations unlimited spending for election campaigns.

“This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.”

The ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions. (New York Times, 1-22-10, Adam Liptak)

Mr. Greg Palast, investigative journalist, wrote on his website, “Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new venom that the Court has injected into the system by its expansive decision in Citizens United.” “I'm losing sleep over the millions — or billions — of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or, from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or, Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.

Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a PAC's federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA.

But under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.”

Mr. Palast continued, “The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign governments. … Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations…Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of Washington D.C. says corporations will now have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles.

Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, may now give unlimited sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures.

And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy.”

Mr. Palast describes how corporations poison the campaigns of politicians and deceptively influence the decisions of voters who vote NOT in their own best interests. “Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, "Coalition for Our Children's Future." The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but from a corporation called "Triad Inc."

Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal election law. As of today, such money-poisoned politicking has become legit.” (Gregpalast.com, Manchurian Candidates:
 Supreme Court allows China and others
 unlimited spending in US,1-21-10 elections)

The Supreme Court majority members who appear to create new law cloth from their own looms, appear to be part of the neo-fascist ‘corpora-politico’ uprising in this country. We saw it with Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, which brought in tanker loads of cash to buy neo-con politicians to fill the seats of Congress on behalf of the international corporate royalists. They were instrumental in crafting an agenda that brought President Clinton to the table with an 18 carat gold nibbed Schaeffer fountain pen embossed with the words “Bill Clinton” along with the White House seal, in hand to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, and create the Commodity Futures Modernization Act-1999, opening the flood gates allowing the laissez-faire, faux-free market capitalists to begin feeding at the Treasury-Federal Reserve’s public cash trough, as they fabricated fake mortgage-backed securities and formulated fictitious and fraudulent derivative contracts. Along with that tall order, they shipped US jobs over to countries with minimal-to-no worker rules, regulations, or minimum wage scales.

Dr. Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, suggested in his 1-25-10 Huffington Post piece titled Leveling the Economic and Political Playing Field, “…to get the privilege of limited liability, corporations would have to give up their political rights in the same way that insurance companies often require people to give up their right to sue and instead submit to binding arbitration. Everyone still has the right to sue, but not in the cases where they have explicitly surrendered this right to the insurance company. Similarly, corporations still have the full right to take part in political activity, but not if they have surrendered this right in order to gain the privilege of limited liability. There is actually precedent for exactly this sort of restriction in the law. Tax-exempt organizations are severely restricted in their ability to support candidates, lobby legislatures, or in other ways take part in the political process. This is not viewed as a restriction on freedom of speech; it is simply a condition of getting tax-exempt status. These organizations are free to engage in as much political activity as they like, but not when they are benefiting from tax-exempt status. There is no reason that the government can't apply the same rules to the political conduct of corporations as it does to tax-exempt organizations. They can do whatever they like, but not when they benefit from the privilege of limited liability.”

Dr. Baker concludes his piece with the following truth, “nless we can do something to reverse the direction of politics in the United States, the burden that the wealthy and corporate America impose on the rest of society will grow ever larger. And we should be very clear: this has absolutely zero to do with free markets and free speech. This is entirely about writing the rules so that the rich can rip off the rest of us.”

And in addition, we have Timmy Geithner threatening Americans by inferring that if Ben Bernanke is not re-nominated by Congress, there will be trouble. "The markets would view this as very troubling thing for the economy as the whole.”

Timmy Geithner appears to be working to help the mega-investment banks avoid President Obama’s financial regulatory reform plan. President Obama is broaching the idea of limiting a bank’s ability, if they consider themselves a banking holding company, to have the government federally insure their deposits, if they trade in risk-based securities for their own accounts, and if they pedal in hedge or private equity funds.

But Geithner would work around such rules by offering banks that are skittish about such government regulation the opportunity to shed their holding company mystery cloak, which allowed them to tap into government TARP funds and feed at the Federal Reserve’s discount cash fund window feeding trough. But now that Obama wants to change the rules, they will remake themselves once again.  The Geithner Coup Intervention Plan would allow them to keep their trading and investment crap table operations flowing without financial interruption. Goldman Sachs would be the biggest financial casino operator to benefit from such a Geithner push-back plan.

This is the war against working Americans. We have Trojan horses, such as Timmie-daG-Geithner, inside the White House, being subverted by former Clintonian Treasury Secretary, Paul Volcker, advising President Obama that he needs to move on financial market regulatory reform unless he wants to continue with the Goldman Sachs-business-as-usual plan.

With the Supreme Court siding with the mega-investment banking giants, and the Goliath-like international corporate royalists to secure legislator loyalty and an executive who would likely be bought and paid for to serve their profit oriented purposes, the American worker, and their families will be forced into serfdom. It is coming.

Unless Congress changes the definition of what it means to be a corporation to exclude the ability to engage in campaign contributions, this nation will become the type of nation that we saw Italy become under Mussolini’s rule, whereby corporations and government had a super strong symbiotic relationship. Any change is unlikely, since the process of buying elections, along with secret groups hiding behind PACs selling their be-afraid agenda, cannot be the force of change needed for America to move forward with success.

President Obama will be giving his first State Of The Union address Wednesday. If he doesn’t speak about real changes that will put heavy duty chains around the necks of our financial industry, and dynamic ways to bring jobs to the unemployed, while protecting the economic fires burning all around working Americans from hamlet, to town, to village, to city, as well as illustrating a sustainable vision for the future of the country, his presidency is over.

Thanks for reading, jerry

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

It Was A Banner Year For Goldman Sachs-The Nation’s Leading Predator

As the economic armada is sinking with billowing smoke in the Sea of Financial Crisis, the U.S.S. Goldman Sachs raises a banner across its deck, announcing “Mission Accomplished”, Lord Lloyd Blankfein proclaims, “There’s no crisis that can’t be won!” During the state dinner aboard ship, during Lord Blankfein gives the opening address. He begins with a humbling first sentence stunning all of the oligarchs enjoying their elegant luncheon. He says, “A scam is a terrible thing to waste!” The crowd roars in applause, and a toast is made to Charles Ponzi, the first known grand Ponzi conartists of 1919.

That is correct. There is no crisis that cannot be scammed. While the neo-cons in the Grotesquely Oligarchist Psychopathetic Repugnicon Party are all saying that mortgage holders, in spite of being underwater with their mortgages, should not walk away from them. They must adhere to their obligations. WTF! are they talking about? As far as I can tell, Lord Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, AIG, and the rest of the financial crime syndicate thieves were about to sink in the Sea of Financial Crisis if they weren’t given TARP, TALF, PPIP, Fed Fund Drive-Through Windows (‘Can I have a Happy Meal with that, please?), and more totaling $23 trillion supplied by the taxpayers; yet, the homeowners, who were ripped off of $12T in household wealth, and found their mortgages underwater because of the financial crime syndicate thieves violated their ‘honor’ as American businessmen and sold junk mortgage derivative bonds to suckers who thought these low-grade securities were AAA, when really they were worth nothing; and then, knowing that these tranched bad mortgages mixed in with a few token good mortgages would likely go up in smoke, bought AIG’s credit default swaps to secure their foreshadowed losses. Nostradamus not required. In addition, they all knew they were Too Big To Fail and the government would step in with financial winches to hoist them all back up again.

But the small fry homeowners left out to dry with underwater mortgages are supposed to stand tall and keep on paying. What garbage.

Now, President Peacock Obama, who spent a year displaying his fancy feathers for the world to see as he strutted, while globetrotting, smiling for the cameras, while giving articulate speeches, has now decided to show he is more than just pretty feathers. He has told the voters that it was his “commitment [is] to recover every single dime the American people are owed.” Funny, funny Mr. President!! Where are the teeth behind this meek appeal? How will you actually do this? And, will you cower away when the banking predators come for your throat?

Your plan appears to be one that will place a tax levy on the biggest financial institutions in order to recoup losses from the TARP bailout program, which would amount to $90B over ten years. Now, being the math wizard that I am, that comes to just $9B per year. Goldman Sachs’ 2009 profit came to a whopping $50B, with $20B passed out in bonuses. Happy New Year big shots. Now, I would say President Obama has convinced himself that he believes he is sure talking tough. Unfortunately, he is only doing his new kabuki theater routine. It is just for show. He wants to try and look like he is all about the little guy. While stumping in Massachusetts for the Democrat who eventually lost to a neo-con Republican opposed to health care reform as viewed through the Democratic keyhole, he kept talking about the little guy and gal. Those hurting. Those suffering. Those who have lost so much while the bankstas took it all home with them. What a kabuki dance if I ever saw one. Wave the magic wand, Mr. President, and chocolates will come raining down on everyone, as George W. Bush believed when he entered Iraq for the first time.

Let us review the scam artistry that Goldman Sachs and the others engaged in. Brooksley Born, a member of the Financial Crisis Commission hearing panel, and the former head of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, under Clinton, who, in 1998, publicly warned Alan Greenspan and Jamie Dimon, chairman of JPMorgan Chase, that there was a derivatives tsunami gathering a huge amount of destructive energy as it approached our own shores. They laughed at her, told her to go away and take some cookies on her way out. During these current hearings she reminded the four leading banksta syndicate operators testifying before her (GS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and BoA that they were chairmen of firms that they were responsible for about $230 TRILLION worth of trade in over-the-counter derivatives, much of which were still unmonitored!!! Holy heck! And the cons are worried about underwater mortgages and the working stiff getting health care at a reasonable price without cancellation?

Over time, the Federal Reserve worked its monetary magic by over-leveraging taxpayer wealth, via the treasury by increasing US debt by 4000%-from less than $3B to over $12T, with much of it going onto the balance sheets and into the pockets of the US corporate oligarchs, the financial banking thieves, and private equity funds, as well as the incredibly predatory industrial war machine.

After the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Federal Reserve and the laissez-faire, “free-market” (HA,HA) capitalists worked their black magic, their Voodoo Economics, by pressing legislators to erode the rules and regulations that were put into place following the economic collapse of the 1930s. As the government oversight was erased, the economic and financial predators began sucking from Lady Liberty’s breast to drain as much taxpayer wealth as was possible, revving up into a full force gale beginning in 2000. It appears that after one year of President Obama’s leadership, none of the erased rules and regulations had been restored, along with what we should have learned from past lessons.

We now have begun to see behind the Shadow Banking curtain thanks to the hosts on MSNBC, and others, such as Matt Taibbi’s work published in the Rolling Stone magazine, exactly how Goldman Sachs engaged in fraud against their clients, the American people, and AIG. Also, we are seeing a conspiracy to cover-up the fraud committed by the likes of Hank-the Paulie-Paulson, Monster Man of the Year—Bennie the Beard Bernanke, Lordie Lordie Blankfein, and Timmie-daG-Geithner, all of whom should be indicted using RICO. Where is the Justice Department? Where is the call for a Grand Jury investigation?

Back in 2008, when Timmie the G was President of the New York Fed and his chairman was Steve Friedman, who also had been a Goldman Sachs chairman, too, began mopping up AIG’s garbage mortgage bonds that they were insuring for Goldman Sachs to the tune of $14B at 100 cents on the dollar, since GS rejected a 40 cents on the dollar offer. Now tell me if this was not a conspiracy to protect the balance sheet of the top financial crime syndicate boss—Lord Blankfein!

Not only did GS get full value for their derivative contracts insured by AIG, but Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia did as well. They all got reimbursed by the taxpayer to the tune of $27.1B. Socialize the losses and privatize the gains!

It appears that under Bush, Hank Paulson and the others plotted to kill Goldman Sachs’ competition and leave only GS on the top of the investment banksta dog pile, since Goldman had its field marshal generals embedded in the government protecting their interests.

Lehman Brothers was brought down in 2007, and Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley were decapitated. While this planned demolition was going on, and long before, Goldman Sachs was selling garbage mortgage backed securities to suckers believing in the financial market’s Golden Egg, when actually it was rotten inside, while the wizards inside GS were selling off their garbage to AIG and buying swap insurance to guarantee their losses. They all knew, since Hank Paulson, a veteran GS chairman, then acting as Bush’s Treasury secretary, and Robert Rubin close to his side, as well as Bernanke, and Geithner, would rescue any of their losses when, and not if, it got there. There was no such thing as risk management. What it meant was take all the risk you want, Uncle Sam is there to help! Didn’t Reagan hate that phrase? Bush didn’t listen!

In 2006 and on into 2007, GS sold somewhere around $39B of their mortgage junk, and used their ‘honorable’ status as that of “upstanding” investment bankers and sold around $17B more mortgage junk securities for their clients, yet those good, law biding American business bankers never told the suckers who ended up buying those garbage bonds that they were making bets on the side just in case those mortgage bonds went south because the never-ending boom in housing price values might actually come tumbling down.

In late 2006, McClatchy News reported that Goldman Sachs spokesman, Michael DuVally said that the firm decided, at that time, to reduce its mortgage risks by selling off subprime mortgage-related securities as well as to purchase credit-default swaps which were used to hedge against a serious downturn in the US housing market. This all came about because in December 2006, after “10 straight days of losses” in Goldman’s mortgage business, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar called a meeting of key Goldman personnel.  (1.Economiccollapseblog.com, How Goldman Sachs Made Tens of Billions From The Economic Collapse of America In Four Easy Steps)

It seemed that Goldman Sachs was not going to let their Wall Street casino gambles become losses no matter what they had to do. This is how a crime syndicate operates. And, they are it!

“The New York Times recently wrote: A handful of investors and Wall Street traders, however, anticipated the crisis. In 2006, Wall Street had introduced a new index, called the ABX, which became a way to invest in the direction of mortgage securities. The index allowed traders to bet on or against pools of mortgages with different risk characteristics just as stock indexes enable traders to change the firm’s overall stance on the mortgage market, from positive to negative, though it did not disclose that publicly. Goldman used this new index [to their advantage].

Along with all of this, Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC, has been all over Timmie Geithner to reveal the secret deals and emails that went on between the NY Fed, when he was its president, and AIG, as well as everyone else involved in keeping their secret from their clients, and the SEC, the deal that brought Goldman Sachs, via AIG, a 100 cent reimbursement for their toxic mortgage backed securities that were insured (CDS) through AIG. Geithner has decided that the documents will remain secret until 2018. So much for President Obama’s transparency pledge to America.

These bets would only make money for Goldman Sachs if the U.S. housing market declined.” (See reference 1.)

It sure was a banner year for the King of FOP (Financial Obfuscating Predator), Mr. Lordie Lordie Lloyd Blankfein, but it was the nation that took the hit instead.

Thanks for reading, jerry

 http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Here is the Colbert Report speaking about honor bound! It is great!

A Wall Street Revolt

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Is The New Mr. Wizard!

The G-20 group members will be swarming into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 24-25, 2009, to discuss the state of economic failure that originated right here in the great U.S.A. The global crisis was concocted by fraudulent make-believe mortgage-backed securities/derivatives, and credit default swap swindles that permeated the entire globe. Out of Reaganomics, Laissez-faire capitalism purported by Alan Greenspan-- the has-been Federal Reserve chairman, and Supply-Side economics soothsayers rallying the grandiose plan to trickle down wealth to the working class suckers through the great idea of modest-to-stagnant wages and inexpensive credit deals with escalating compounding interest etched into fine print contracts, as well as the masquerading of homes as ATM machines, the rich became richer beyond their wildest dreams.

Little Boy Bush took an infection upon the body of the economy and drove it deep to the bone allowing it to become systemic, while poisoning the very marrow that made this country great. Once Greenspan was sent out to pasture upon the cushion of his Lazy Boy recliner, Ben Bernanke took the helm of the pirate ship called the Federal Reserve Bank, a member bank of the world’s central banks centered within the International Bank of Settlement.

The Federal Reserve Bank was established in 1913 by Congress under a veil of darkness giving it the power to be the sole issuer of our U.S. dollar. The Treasury collects taxes, and revenues and issues Treasury bonds and bills, which are then bought by the Federal Reserve. Now, since the Fed has bought up Treasuries, they are entitled to receive interest due upon their expiration. In other words, the taxpayers pay interest to a bank that is allowed to print and issue the American dollar.

Without going into detail, the Fed takes, for example, a $100 bond, and banks $10 of the $100 and then loans out $90 at zero percent interest to their broker-dealers and investment banks, which then takes that $90, deposits $10 and then, loans out $80. From $100, $170 is created. $70 created out of thin air via the fractional reserve method. So, what have the investment banks been doing with their Federal Reserve bootie? They (Goldman Sachs, BoA, and the rest) have been gambling on Wall Street pushing the DOW into positive territory. This manipulation is being done by the “Insiders of Wall Street” for their own gain. These investment-banking institutions engage in “front running”, which means that because of their computerized trading capabilities, they can jump ahead of a trading stock that is being pushed up getting ahead of others who are also making the buy and get that stock for a “front-of-the-pack” price.

What we are now witnessing is how the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are part of what could be called a syndicate to serve the financial needs of the corporate financial oligarchs instead of working to repair the damage done to the economy by those members of this syndicate. The American people are left out.

The investment banks that have been provided trillions of dollars through the Federal Reserve through various programs have not been committed to investing in the real economy, but only in themselves. Credit remains locked up. Actually, there is plenty of liquidity but many cannot or will not borrow. Many banks are hoarding their available liquidity.

If we go back to February 2009, and revisit Timmy Geithner’s objectives just after he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, we see that his total intention was to recapitalize the very banks—the syndicate---with over a trillion dollars of the government’s capital. Even back on day one, Geithner was planning to feed the zombie beasts taking them from undernourished zombies full of unexposed and hidden toxic mortgage debt poisoning their balance sheets and viability, to obese zombies with the same unaccounted for toxic debt. His intention was to allow them to borrow Fed funds at zero percent and gamble with it so as to accumulated big profits in order to cushion or pad their balance sheets against the day when they will have to write down their virtually worth-less toxic mortgage debt holdings. It was not about taking care of the economic health of the nation, but to feed the evil beasts.

Yet, Ben Bernanke proclaims that the recession is basically over! Hurray for this Psychotic Reaction!

Geithner said, “We have to both jump start job creation and private investment, and we must get credit flowing again to businesses and families.” This objective has been a failure. Unemployment continues. When counting people that are no longer being counted, August really had 800,000 unemployed Americans. Tent cities in Tennessee, California, Florida, and elsewhere continue to grow. The underemployed numbers are growing, as well. Consumer spending is in decline as Americans save their fragile incomes and work to pay down debt.

Yet the zombie followers of the 9-12 Washington, DC protest last week hate the idea of a public option or a government health plan. Please tell them to give up their Medicare, or Medicaid. How many of the kook-turds are one step away from a lay-off and NO health insurance, or a job change with a jacked up co-pay and a shrunken benefit plan? Oh well. They loved the free ride provided by one of the 41 sponsors funded by the health care insurance industry. They got all-they-could-drink Kook-Aid.

Geithner had his pipedream of creating a public-private partnership to buy illiquid assets from the zombie banks as the way to get them recapitalized and rid of their worth-less mortgage debt burden. FAILURE! This Obama confidante actually believed that from his pipedream plan he could magically create as much as $1T. He then dreamt up a concocted plan that the private part of this partnership would “determine the prices for current troubled and previously illiquid assets.” But it never worked. The holders of this worth-less debt did not want to sell at the assessed price of 23 cents on the dollar. They wanted the FDIC and Treasury and the private sector to suck up 78 or 80 cents on the dollar. There solution was to just hold on to it.

The FDIC (government/taxpayer) was to kick it the lion’s share of the determined price as a way to entice the private sector to take the bait. IT FAILED. Geithner said this: “This program will provide markets working again for the legacy [toxic] loans and assets [the candy coated way of saying debts] that are now burdening the entire financial system.”

In addition, Mr. Wizard Geithner had another scheme and that was called TALF-- (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility), whereby he would take a lump of $100B from the Treasury’s bake house and roll and stretch it out into a nice slab totaling up to $1T of new, freshly made capital in order to jump start new lending in hopes to sucker in consumers and business to borrow once more during a time of total insecurity and mistrust. OH YEAH!

Every morning Timmie Geithner, Treasurer Extraordinaire, must drink a gallon of the magic Kool-aid to believe what he is mixing up is the true elixir for the nation’s economic health.

Now, our Treasurer Extraordinaire was in London and spoke before the G-20, on September 4-5, 2009, defining his position. The UK Telegraph reported that Mr. Wizard Geithner said “You are seeing the first signs of positive growth now in this country and countries around the world.” TimmieBOY, a jobless recovery, with massive deflation, a declining US dollar, and tightened spending are not positive signs.

What he was coding was that Wall Street was showing positive growth. That is all that matters to Mr. Wizard Geithner. While TimmieG said it was too early to withdraw economic stimulus, meaning that he and Ben Bernanke must continue to funnel huge amounts of newly printed cash into the biggest financial institutions so they can continue to gamble on Wall Street and help the Fed chairman mop up Treasuries being unloaded by foreign central banks, Nicholas Sarkozy, the French president, will continue to push for tighter regulation of the financial services industry, as he did at the last G-20, and has promised to do it again when they all reconvene in Pittsburgh.

This means that he has had enough of Geithner allowing the US financial-banking giants to continue to go unregulated, and without transparency as they hide their debts off their balance sheets and manipulate markets as they have been doing.

What is a big laugh for all of us following the G-20 sham is that the world’s richest nations have pledged more than $1 trillion to help pull the global economy through the recession. That is like pocket change for the entire group of nations. Geithner and Bernanke printed up $1.5 trillion since February to hand over just to the top few investment banks right here at home.

The New York Times wrote on 9-11-09 that little has changed on Wall Street, but Mr. Wizard Geithner in tow with his gallon jug of Kool-aid continues to believe that stimulation of the biggest financial-banking institutions continue to be the order of the day so they can persist with their gambling on Wall Street by manipulating the process of trades. This is Mr. Wizard’s way to pave the road to recovery. Yet, he is not talking real reform of the financial sector. He is not talking about using the Anti-Trust laws to break up the too-big-to-fail financial institutions, or to keep them from growing even bigger so as to never again allow any company to hold the U.S. economy hostage.

Here is what Alex Berenson wrote in the NYT:

“Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows.”

“For now, banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos.” “In fact, though, regulators and lawmakers have spent most of the last year trying to save the financial industry, rather than transform it.”

“Simon Johnson, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said that the seeds of another collapse had already sprouted. If major banks are allowed to keep making bets that are ultimately backed by taxpayer guarantees, they will return to the practices that led them to underwrite trillions of dollars in bad loans, Professor Johnson said.”

“They will run up big risks, they will fail again, they will hit us for a big check,” he predicted.” “But even some senior Wall Street executives acknowledge the lack of change surprises them, given how poorly the industry performed last fall and the degree of government support necessary to keep it from collapsing.”

“There was a general feeling that an enormous amount of additional regulation should be put in place to prevent what happened that weekend from happening again,” said Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services and the former chief investment strategist for Morgan Stanley and Pequot Capital. “So far, we haven’t seen a lot of action.”

Robert J. Shiller, the Yale University economics professor who predicted the dot-com crash and the housing bust, said the window for change may be closing. “People will accept change at a time of crisis, but we haven’t managed to do much, and maybe complacency is coming back,” Professor Shiller said. “We seem to be losing momentum.”

Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund that manages $13 billion, said that regulators and lawmakers needed to impose rules so failing banks could be shut, rather than allowed to operate indefinitely with taxpayer support.”

“Mr. [Nassim Nicholas] Taleb[, a statistician, trader, and author,] warns that the system has grown riskier since last fall. The extensive government support that began after Lehman collapsed will lead investors to assume that governments will always prevent major banks from collapsing, he said.”

“So investors will lend money to the financial industry on easy terms. In turn, financial institutions will use that cheap money to make risky loans and trades. The banks will keep the profits when their bets pay off, while taxpayers will swallow the losses when the bets go bad and threaten the system.” “But legislation that would allow regulators to close giant institutions in an orderly fashion has been stalled for months.”

“Another proposed change would require banks to list and trade derivatives through a central clearinghouse, just as stocks and options are traded through exchanges, but it has yet to go anywhere.”

“Moreover, some banks oppose opening derivatives trading, because it would cut their profits by making pricing more visible and as a consequence competitive. For now, legislation to force derivatives trading onto exchanges has stalled, and banks are still writing contracts with limited regulatory oversight.”

“The off-exchange derivatives market is still the Wild West,” Ms. [Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] Bair said.

Everyone in the G-20 knows that the emperor’s wizard wears no clothes, when he believes that he wears the finest of robes. It is clear to many that little has changed, but Geithner is basically saying, “Don’t worry. Be happy. Mr. Wizard is here to fix it.”

So, what will Mr. Wizard Geithner try and sell to the G-20 members? Oh, the U.S. is in recovery!!! Let us all have a shot and a beer, along with French fries packed into our sandwiches! (A Pittsburgh tradition!)

Here is an excerpt from “Will U.S. Consumer Debt Reduction Cripple the Recovery?” gotten from Mike Whitney’s piece, “The Long Adjustment. How Bad Will It Get?”:

“Over the past decade US household spending has served as the main engine of US economic growth. From 2000 to 2007 US annual personal consumption grew by 44%, from $6.9 trillion to $9.9 trillion—faster than either GDP or household income. Consumption accounted for 77% of real US GDP growth during this period…The US has accounted for one-third of the total growth in global private consumption since 1990…” “The amount of US household debt amassed by 2007 was unprecedented whether measured in nominal terms, as a share of GDP (98%) or as a ratio of liabilities to personal disposable income (138%).”

So people, without consumer spending there is no recovery; therefore, to believe the recession is over is delusional.

Will Bada Bing Bernanke, or TimmieG proclaim to the G-20 that the scam they have perpetrated upon Americans and the world is over? Here is Dr. Dean Baker, in “Reverse Bank Robbery” stating that “Even that giant corpse Citigroup is showing signs of life. Its stock is now selling for more than five times the lows it hit earlier this year. Its market capitalization is up nearly $57bn, a bit more than the $45 billion that the government lent them through the Troubled Assets Relief Programme, or TARP.”

So, their profits are a result of the taxpayer’s generosity, and self-sacrifice. Right! It is all about just one of the financial banking crime syndicate programs, and this is called TARP.

Dr. Baker went on to write: “On the other side, banks can buy up US government bonds that are currently paying around 3.5%.” “This means that we lend the banks the money that they lend to us, albeit at a considerably higher interest rate. To take round numbers, lets say that the banks have borrowed $1 trillion from the Fed’s various lending facilities. (The Fed’s total loans are now over $2T.) Suppose they pay an average interest rate of 0.2% on this money. If the banks then buy up government bonds that pay a 3.5% interest rate, they can pocket the difference of 3.3 percentage points. On a trillion dollars of lending, this will give the banks $33bn a year in net interest or profit. This is the extra money that the government is paying the banks to borrow back the money that it lent them through the Fed.” “We…have shrewd traders like [the] Goldman Sachs crew…[that] take the money that they borrowed, either directly from the government or with the government’s guarantee, and use it to speculate in items like oil and other commodities.”

This has been the “shared sacrifice” President Obama has asked us all to endure. We have been asked to allow the financial oligarchs the right to take our money and use it to make themselves filthy rich at the expense of the real economy. We have been asked because these oligarchs own the government and need to see bigger salaries and bonuses. The “shared sacrifice” has been seen in a 33% drop in housing prices since 2007. The deleveraging of the rest of America’s debt continues. They are in the process of reducing their debt as a group by $2.5 trillion and lower their debt-to-equity ratios to a much lower expectation. The $14 trillion in accrued household debt over the last 7 years had doubled and can no longer be sustained. Americans are foreclosing on their homes, asking for revaluations of their mortgages, and abandoning payments accumulated on their credit cards.

I don’t think the recession is over, but just getting started! Will Mr. Wizard Geithner begin talking about Change We Can Believe In? Doubtful.

Mike Whitney excerpted from McKinsey Global Institute’s “Will US Consumer Debt Reduction Cripple the Recovery?”, in his Counterpunch piece titled Chairman Milquetoast’s Solutions-Band-Aids for the Recession, 8-28-09:

“Homeowners withdrew “$2.3 trillion in home equity loans and cash-out refinancings between 2003-2008”. Most of the money was spent on personal consumption. Where will the money come from now that home equity has gone negative?”

How much clearer can it be spelled out even to the one-dimensional toy soldiers brought to D.C., wound up and told to march against a public option health care plan? It is much more about the largest financial multi-national banking institutions, the top 500 largest multi-national corporations, and the top 10% of the wealth holders. A public option may just protect the toy soldiers from bankruptcy. It should be more about protesting the take-over of our economy by the corporate thieves on Wall Street than about a public option to protect working Americans from further economic losses.

Mike Whitney excerpted Don Monkerud, “Wealth Inequality Destroys US Ideals” in the above piece, “In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S.”

Mr. Whitney, in his piece, wrote: “Over 40% of GNP comes from Fortune 500 companies. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research, the 500 largest conglomerates in the U.S. “control over two-thirds of the business resources, employ two-thirds of the industrial workers, account for 60 percent of sales, and collect over 70 percent of the profits.” He also wrote “The top 1 percent incomes captured half of the overall economic growth over the period 1993-2007. The top 14,988 households received 6.04% of income, the highest figure for any year since the data became available. The top 1% of households received 23.5% of income, while the top 10% received 49.7% of income (highest on record).”

So TimmieG, will you and the others discuss with the G-20 members, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the too-big-to-fail corporate oligarchy in this world and how they need to be broken up into not-too-big-to-fail companies for the purpose of a more realistic free market? Doubtful.

To further drive home the fact that what we have is an economic crime syndicate, Dr. Dean Baker wrote in “Bailouts Without Accountability-Bernanke’s Bad Money” that Ben Bernanke was pushing Congress to believe that his main concern was “economic and financial stability” and unless the Fed was to receive $700bn in TARP funds, we would see the opposite in our financial markets and a collapse within the overall economy. “Last September, when he [Bernanke] was telling Congress that the economy would collapse if it did not approve the $700 billion TARP bailout, he warned that the commercial paper market would shut down.” But the truth-be-known that “What Mr. Bernanke apparently forgot to tell Congress back then, [was] that the Fed [had] the authority to directly buy commercial paper from financial and non-financial companies. In other words, the Fed [had] the power to prevent the sort of economic collapse that Bernanke warned would happen if Congress did not quickly approve the TARP. In fact, Bernanke announced that the Fed would create a special lending facility to buy commercial paper the weekend after Congress voted to approve the TARP.”

This was, and continues to be, the Royal Scam, brought to all of us by President Obama, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner. They all work for the financial crime syndicate, which had Bernanke cry wolf before Congress, in September of 2008, to scare Congress into giving Treasury funds in order to bail out the banks when the Fed had the power to create these special lending facilities independent of Congress and without the TARP funds. But instead, he stole an additional $700 billion to pass out to his bank CEO crime bosses. All the instability has been created by Bernanke and is continuing today.

So, will there be any real significant change that we could believe in when the G-20 comes to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? The history has shown nothing will change. The recession will continue and a recovery will only occur in dreams.

thanks for reading, jerry