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by IfLizWereQueen

Do you know why the plutocrats in Washington and Wall Street hate the OWS groups?

November 1, 2011 in Class War, Wall Street

Because the OWS has put the focus back where it should be:  On the Economy and how the Plutocrats on Wall Street and Washington crashed it.

Unlike the foot soldiers for the David Koch sponsored Tea Party who swallowed the Republican mantra with an extra dose of steroids, the members of Occupy Wall Street are not accepting the platitudes of EITHER party.  You won’t hear them spouting the cliches of the rich:  Lower taxes and tort reform.  You won’t hear them saying that “corporations are people.”  You won’t hear them saying that Democrats are “progressive” and represent the majority either.

ProPublica has answered the question:  What’s happened to the big players in the Financial Crisis. Here are a few snippets from that larger piece. Here are the folks who crashed the US economy and then walked away with other people’s money and nothing will change until we kick the plutocrats that support them out of Congress.

THE MORTGAGE ORIGINATORS

WHAT THEY DID:  Mortgage Lenders contributed to the financial crisis by using aggressive tactics to rope borrowers into complex mortgages that were more expensive than they first appeared.  In addition, some of them like Ameriquest forged documents, and juiced mortgages with hidden rates and fees.  A similar culture existed at Washington Mutual.  Countrywide also pushed customers to sign on for complex and costly mortgages that boosted the company’s profits.  Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo was accused of misleading investors about the company’s mortgage lending practices.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:  Few prosecutions have been brought against subprime mortgage lenders.  Ameriquest went out of business in 2007 and Citigroup bought its mortgage lending unit.  Washington Mutual was bought by JP Morgan in 2008.  A Department of Justice investigation into alleged fraud at WAMU closed with no charges this summer. Bank of America purchased Countrywide in January of 2008.  Mozilo left the company after the sale and settled an SEC lawsuit for $67.5 million with no admission of wrongdoing.  Bank of American invited several senior Countrywide executives to stay on and run its mortgage unit.  Deutsche Bank is still under investigation by the Justice Department.

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THE MORTGAGE SECURITIZERS

WHAT THEY DID: In the years before the crash, banks took subprime mortagages, bundled them together with prime mortgages and turned them into collateral for bonds or securities and thus seeded the bad mortgages throughout the financial system.  Some banks such as Washington mutual, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and others were securitizing mortgages as well as originating them.  Other companies such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs bought the mortgages straight from the subprime lenders, bundled them into securities and sold them to investors including pension funds and insurance companies.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:  This spring New York Attorney General launched a probe into mortgage securitization during the housing boom  at Bank of America, JP Morgan, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  Morgan Stanley settled with nevada’s Attorney General last month following an investigation into problems with the securitization process.  As part of a proposed settlement with 50 state attroneys general over foreclosure abuses, several big banks were offered immunity from charges related to improper mortgage origination and securitization. California and New York have withdrawn from those talks.

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THE PEOPLE WHO CREATED AND DEALT THE CDOS

WHAT THEY DID:  Once mortgages had been bundled into mortgage-backed securities, other bankers took groups of them and bundled them together into new financial products called Collateralized Debt Obligations. CDOs are composed of tiers with different levels of risk.  a hedge fund named Magnetar worked with banks to fill CDOs with the riskiest possible materials, then used credit default swaps to bet that they would fail.

American International Group and their London-based financial products unit was among the entities that provided credit default swaps on CDOs.  Their business of insuring these risky securities made AIG large short-term profits but brought the company to the brink of collapse and prompted an $85 billion government bailout.

Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan all made CDO deals with Magnetar.

When all else failed and the crooks couldn’t sell the CDOs, they bought them from each other to create the illusion of investors when there were none. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also made similar deals i which they created and them bet against risky CDOs.  The hedge fund Paulson & CO helped decide which assets to put in side Goldman’s CDOs.  [If you check your Washington elected officials assets on Open Secrets, you may find that many of them are invested in Paulson & Co. --a firm that specializes in betting against the US economy.  These Congressional asses believe in covering their Wall Street bets. For example, Eric Cantor is among those who bet against the US Economy--and you count on a guy like this to represent you?  People in Cantor's Congressional district need a serious wakeup call.]

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:   Magnetar is still thriving.  In 2007, magnetar’s founder took home $280 million and the fund had $7.6 billion under management. overall, the banks and individuals involved in DCO deals haven’t been convicted on criminal charges.  The civil suits against them have produced fines that aren’t very big compared to the profit they made.

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THE RATINGS AGENCIES

WHAT THEY DID:  Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch gave their highest rating to investments base on risky mortgage in years leading up to the financial crisis.  A Senate investigations panel found that S&P and Moody’s continued doing so even as they housing market was collapsing.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:  The SEC is considering suing Standard and Poor’s over one particular CDO deal linked to hedge fund Magnetar.  The SEC has previously considered sing Moody’s but instead issued a report criticizing all the rating agencies.

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THE REGULATORS

WHAT THEY DID:  The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded that the SED failed to crack down on risky lending practies at banks and make them keep more substantial capital reserves as a buffer against losses.  They also found that the Federal reserve failed to stop the housing bubble by setting prudent mortgage lending standards even though it was the one regulator that had the power to do so.

Overall, SEC enforcement actions went down under the leadership of Christopher Cox and a 2009 GAO report found that he increased barriers to launching probes and levying fines. Alan Greenspan refused to heighten scrutiny of the subprime mortgage market. He later said before Congress that it was a mistake to presume that financial firms’ own rational self-interest would serve as an adequate regulator.  The Office of Thrift Supervision, tasked with overseeing savings and loan banks, helped to scale back their own regulatory powers. In 2003 James Gillernan and John Reich, then heads of the OTS and the FDIC brought a chainsaw to a press conference as an indication of how they planned to cut back on regulation.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:  Christopher Cox stepped down in 2009 under public pressure.  The OTS was dissolvd this summer and its duties assumed by the OCC whose head has been advocating to weaken rules set out by the Dodd Frank financial reform law.

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THE POLITICIANS

WHAT THEY DID:  They passed legislation that made it possible for all this to transpire.  In 1999 two bills supported by Phil Gramm and signed into law by Bill Clinton make it possible for the current financial meltdown to take place and it is all directly related to the deregulation of the financial industry.  The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealed all the remaining parts of Glass-Steagall, allowing firms to participate in traditional banking, investment banking, and insurance at the same time.

The lobbyists for the financial industries also are to be given their due for influencing this mess. Between 1999 and 2008 the financial industry spent $2.7 billion lobbying the federal government, and donated more than $1 billion to political campaigns. While deregulation took place mainly under Clinton’s watch,George W. Bush is faulted for not doing more to stop the out of control housing market.

Tim Geithner as president of the new York Fed from 2003 to 2009 missed opportunities to prevent major financial firms from self-destructing.  Henry Paulson introduced greater uncertainty into the financial markets by allowing Lehman Brothers to fail.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:  Phil Gram as been a vice chairman at UBS since he left Congress in 2002.  Summers served as a top economic advisor to Obama until November 2010 and since then he has been teaching at Harvard.  Geithner  is currently serving as Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

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THE EXECUTIVES OF THE BIG INVESTMENT BANKS

WHAT THEY DID:  Many of them took actions that contributed to the destruction of their own firms.  Five major investment banks–Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley– kept such small cushions of capital at the banks that they were extremely vulnerable to losses. Merrill Lynch executives helped to blow up their own company by retaining extremely risky portions of the CDOs they created, paying a unit within the firm to buy them when no one else would.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW:  in 2009 two Bear Sterns hedge fund managers were cleared of fraud charges over allegedly lying to investors.  A probe of  Lehman Brothers stalled this spring.  Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of American in the fall of 2008.  As for the executives who helped to crash the firm, they walked away with millions.  Some such as Dick Fuld are still woking on Wall Street.

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ILWQ Comments

If you have time, be sure to read the complete ProPublica article as it contains many more links and more detail regarding the financial melt down.  Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis.

Proclaim the Queen!

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    by IfLizWereQueen

    Schemes and Scenes from USA, Inc. and its Multilevel Marketing Scheme Economy

    August 23, 2011 in Class War

    Two of  the more outstanding heists  carried out by Wall Street with the assistance of Congressional Millionaires from both parties over the past three years:

    The TARP Heist

    TARP allowed the  United States Department of the Treasury  to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of “troubled assets.  Of course they used your money and my money to payoff the rich who had made bad business decisions.  Do you wonder what happened to our Social Security funds?  It’s because people like Bernanke and Greenspan used our funds as collateral to float their deals for their wealthy pals and left the American people with worthless I.O.U.s.  Do you realize what cutting payroll taxes means for the majority–80% of us?  It amounts to a tax on us because cutting payroll taxes = cutting our benefits.  Why do you think the leadership of BOTH parties want to kill unions and organized labor?  It’s because organized labor is all that stands in between the 80% of Americans who earn less than $100,000 a year and people like Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama, John Boehner, Rick Perry, etc.  Why do you think the Democratic Party is holding their national convention in NC, a right to work state?  It’s because the plutocratic leadership of that party is no different from the plutocratic leadership of the Republican Party.  They do not give a damn about 80% of the American people, that’s why.

     

    REMEMBER HIM?  Bush’s Secretary of Treasury–King Henry Paulson? Like the rest of the Wall Street royalty, he thinks the serfs (taxpayers) should bail out the rich when they make very bad business decisions.  Remember how wall-eyed, scared jackrabbit he looked when he wasn’t for sure at first  if he was going to pull off his TARP heist?  Well that part was for real because, contrary to all their claims, Goldman Sachs would have gone down the tubes without TARP and the subsequent “repayment” to Goldman Sachs by AIG with money that AIG in turn got from the American taxpayers.  Paulson had his fortune invested in Goldman Sachs.  A giant shuffling shell game designed to amaze, enrage and confuse ensured–all for the rich paid for by the 80% of us who do pay our taxes.  We are the ones in the lower tiers of the multilevel marketing scheme–we are the ones who not only get nothing, we lose because our shares are going to those at the top of the pyramid. If we dare to be so arrogant as to complain, then those at the topic mock us and tell us it’s our own fault because “we are not working hard enough.  If we were, we would be rich like them.”

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    Robbing the Taxpayer to Pay the Taxpayer Heist

    [Goldman Sachs did not repay Goldman's debt to TARP and the American people. the American people footed the bill for Goldman Sachs to the tune of  $10 billion.  Thanks to Goldman's shell shuffling, it looked like Goldman Sachs was repaying a debt when in fact they were making a $2.9 billion profit at the expense of the American taxpayers.]

    Where there are banking shell games, Goldman Sachs and Lloyd Blankfein are in the thick of it.

    In case you missed it, Lloyd Blankfein used the taxpayers money to pay back the taxpayer’s money in June of 2009 and called it “successful business”.  I guess it was for Mr. Blankfein.  You see, AIG owed Goldman Sachs $12.9  billion.  When the American people bailed out AIG, they used the American taxpayers money to repay their loans to banks like Goldman Sachs as well as to many foreign banks.  How about that folks!  We not only bail out rich Americans, we bail out rich foreigners as well.

    In November 2008, AIG would probably have been able to strike settlements that, at least at the time, could have saved the giant troubled insurer, and taxpayers, billions of dollars. Instead, after a few days of harried discussions, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which was orchestrating the government’s bailout of AIG — instructed the insurer to pay its counterparties, which included Goldman Sachs and a number of European banks, in full. The BlackRock report is one of many documents recently unearthed by a congressional investigation into the controversial bailout of AIG, which could still cost taxpayers as much as $180 billion.
    MORE

    and no, AIG has not repaid the American people and furthermore they are not likely to either.  Furthermore, as long as the Federal Reserve is off limits for bank audits, Ben Bernanke can tell us anything he wants to and/or anything that Goldman Sachs tells him to tell the American people regarding the repayment of that loan.  There is no oversight on the Federal Reserve.  None  whatsoever!

    So you can look at the “Goldman Sachs repayment” as either a $10 billion heist or as a $12.9 billion heist–either way you would be right.  And all the clever shell shuffling in the world from Goldman Sachs OR the Federal Reserve is not going to hide that fact.

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    The Two Latest Scams perpetrated on the American People by the leadership of BOTH parties:  Austerity and “shared sacrifice”

    I don’t know who they think they are fooling with their newspeak rhetoric, but it is not a growing majority of Americans.

    21st Century Newspeak Translation:

    Austerity still translates as “sternness or severity of manner or attitude”;  however, the meaning is further constricted to “as applied against the segment of the American population who fall into the 80% count–the 80% of Americans who earn less than $100,000 a year.”   Austerity and the application of measures such as to render conditions of sternness, severity, and deprivation of basic needs do not apply to the wealthy.  Thus if you hear one of the owners, their corporate stock monkey politicians, or their corporate stock monkey pundits talking about “austerity”,  you better head for the woods and hide unless you are finally ready to stand up and quit pretending as if the 20% are the majority.

    It is fast becoming apparent that the rich sacrifice nothing and share even less.

    Yes this is a class war.  If  you still think it is not, then you still are not awake.

    ________________________________________________

    USA Economy Works Like a Multilevel Marketing Scheme

    Both parties support the Milton Friedman economic ideology which is known by some as “conservative economic neo-liberalism.” It is an economic ideology that only works for the upper 20%.  The rest of us who work for a living get the “jobless recovery.”

    Eventually, this economic ideology results in an economy and related government which looks more like a multilevel marketing scheme than a Democratic  representation of the majority.  It will eventually end life as they know it for the rich as well.  It will take longer, but the quality of their lives will also be greatly diminished.  The meltdown has begun and the only way to stop it is to address the root cause which is the broken economic ideology that has been driving our nation into the ditch for the past 30+ years.

    The only question that remains is how far down do the majority have to sink before we start the revolution because those who think that the rich are giving up their wealth and power without a bloodbath are mistaken.  Some of them like Warren Buffett may talk, but try to make them walk their talk and see what happens.

     

    Proclaim the Queen!

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      by IfLizWereQueen

      The Financial Terrorism of Wall Street Needs to End NOW!

      June 6, 2011 in Banks, Wall Street

      A video of an interview with Max Keiser explaining Wall Street Banks and their financial Terrorism appears on my website. The following text is my inspiration from that video.

      It is reported that Lloyd Blankfein and others are marked by death by what Libya considers a blatant disregard for their sovereign wealth fund.  Keiser points out in the interview that Libya is experiencing what people in America and many people around the world are experiencing– He refers to it as “financial rape” by bankers whether it is Dominique Strauss Kahn with the IMF or whether it is Lloyd Blankfein, or Jamie Dimon.  Everyone is getting financially raped by these bankers and we can only guess as to what the outcome will be.  The theft of Libya’s sovereign fund all goes back to 2004 when Tony Blair was in Libya and doing deals with Gaddafi. Even at that time Blair was setting up banks to swoop in and start to pick apart the sovereign wealth fund of Libya.  And of course when Tony Blair left Downing Street, he took a position with JP Morgan.  He went right to JP Morgan and started setting JP Morgan up for these deals. Goldman Sachs swooped in like a shark smelling blood in the water.

      Banks are financial terrorists in the way they conduct their operations whether it is subprime lending markets or handling the sovereign funds of a nation.

      Goldman Sachs is now being investigated for more fraud, more larceny.  How do you think they pay themselves $140 million bonuses at the end of the year?  They steal it with the assistance of members of the US Congress who are themselves wealthy stock holders.  How convenient.  They pass laws to make it easy for banks to commit financial terrorism on the people of the USA and the world because our elected officials in Washington DC  profit from these crimes.

      Two party system?  That is a myth folks. In the USA we have one party–the party of the Wall Street rich. They put on a great and entertaining sideshow patterned after the fake enmity demonstrated by TV professional wrestlers, but at the end of the day, people like President Obama and John Boehner play golf together.

      Our economy is collapsing, and the use of food stamps is increasing [By the way, the modern day food stamp system is the invention, creation and administration of JP Morgan.] They make money out of running and creating ghettos. They make money from our poverty and misery. They make money out of financial terrorism.  Wall Street bankers are financial terrorists.

      When these markets crash, they make billions.  Hank Paulson and his crew made billions on the bailout in 2008.  In the last hours of the Bush Administration, Paulson with his chicken-little act and his Goldman Sachs pals committed financial terrorism on the citizens of the USA.  All the money that Obama has been spending to fight so-called terrorism elsewhere in the world, he would do the world a great big favor by going down to Wall Street and arresting financial terrorists and throwing them in Guantanamo Bay and having them tortured for their crimes against humanity.

      For example in 2008 the traders on Goldman Sachs commodity index literally starved millions of people to death in a year when the world experienced the highest wheat production in 100 years.  How did they do it?  By buying and buying wheat and not selling, they created the illusion of a shortage of wheat on the commodities market and falsely drove up the price of wheat. Thus many people in other parts of the world could not afford to buy food and they starved to death in a year when wheat should have been cheapest ever.  This is just one tiny example of what financial terrorism is and the pigs on Wall Street commit such crimes every day. These racketeers literally starve people to death and get away with it.

      Debt Ceiling

      They want to raise the debt ceiling. Of course they do.  The American people don’t want to raise the debt ceiling.  So what does Wall Street do? They tell the American people:  either you raise the debt ceiling or we will crash the stock market.  They use markets as a weapon.  Give us more debt so we can finance more speculative bets .  Then we can go into more foreign countries and load them up with debt and force austerity measures on them.   Paulson and Blankfein were in Greece two years ahead of the current crisis plotting its demise.

      The American people should do the gangsters a favor by crashing the market ourselves by removing all our Wall Street investments and investing in our local economies.

      Stop Looking for the Hero and Become One

      Who has the balls to take these bankers down to the chopping block and get rid of them?  Right now the banks are focusing on destroying Greece and Ireland. They have already got multi-hundred billion dollar negative bets on these countries.  S&P are in bed with these criminals as they downgrade the debt.  They are all working together as a team.  It is collusion.  No, actually it is racketeering.

      Only the people can end the financial terrorism of Wall Street

      Jean-Jacques Rousseau said “When the social contract is broken, the people must revolt.”

      Only the people can stop the financial terrorism of Wall Street and their bankster racketeers. Each one of us acting in unison as individuals.  Don’t expect people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or other plutocrats who say they represent us to do the job.  These people are part of the problem of Wall Street terrorism.  They and at least 261 millionaires (almost half of our Congress) profit from the racketeering of Wall Street.  At the end of the day Barack Obama and John Boehner play golf together.  They don’t give a damn about you and me.

      Proclaim the Queen!

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        by IfLizWereQueen

        “Jobless Recovery” and other Oxymorons

        March 1, 2010 in Economics and Ideology, Wall Street

        Photobucket

        CONVERSATION FRAGMENT OVERHEAD IN THE WHITE HOUSE IN NOVEMBER OF 2008:
        “.  .  .  Looks like we will need a much larger carpet bag.”

        **************************************************************************

        Eighteen months since the Bush Administration/ Hank Paulson $800 billion heist of the American economy as George Bush was packing his bags . . . and what do we have to show for it?

        We have what those in Washington call a “jobless recovery”.  What that means is that those who live on Wall Street–which includes at least half of Congress and all of the 12,553 lobbyists in Washington –are doing just fine.  For Main Street, what this means is that we have an unemployment rate of 10.6% in the USA and an estimated 20% underemployment rate. [Underemployment includes Americans who are not working full time but who wish to and Americans who are working at jobs far below their skill and educational levels.]

        If that $800 billion that Henry, George and their  Wall Street pals put in their personal pockets had been flooded onto Main Street instead, then our economy would be recovered today because Main Street circulates its capital while Wall Street does not.

        This phenomenon of mainstream media and financial rags like the  Wall Street Journal writing of  “economic recovery” while the rest of us on Main Street are saying “Huh?  What recovery?” is nothing new.  Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist reported on it in 2006.

        In case you don’t remember, those from the Beltway and Wall Street were crowing about the “strong” economy in 2006 as well.  The Dow was surpassing 12,000 for the first time, the gross domestic product was up–yet those of us on Main Street were still not happy.  What was wrong with us?  Weren’t we reading the reports on how well Wall Street was doing?  Ordinary Americans in 2006 did not have the rave reviews of Wall Street for our economy.  Instead we were saying that the economy was only fair to poor. THAT’S BECAUSE IT WAS FOR US.

        Wages had failed to keep up with rising prices. Even in 2005, a year in which the economy grew quite fast, the income of most non-elderly families lagged behind inflation. The number of Americans in poverty had risen even in the face of an official economic recovery, as had the number of Americans without health insurance. Most Americans are little, if any, better off than they were last year and definitely worse off than they were in 2000.

        And you know what folks?  All this is still true today, only it has gotten worse.  This proves one of my points:  It does not matter which party is in office.  The majority of them do not represent the majority of you.

        ******************************************************************************

        Although wages stagnated after Bush took office, corporate profits doubled. The gap between the nation’s CEOs and average workers was  ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush’s tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush’s tax cuts took effect, those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year — the richest five percent of the population — pocketed almost half of the money. Those who made less than $75,000 a year — 80% of America— received barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality rose at a fantastic rate.

        Rising inequality isn’t new. The gap between rich and poor started growing before Ronald Reagan took office, and it continued to widen through the Clinton years. But what happened under Bush was something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth was being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans failed to gain ground even during a time of economic growth — and they knew it and that is why those of us on Main Street were reporting the economy as fair to poor.

        ****************************************************************************

        If you are interested in learning more about our economy and what has happened and continues to happen to us–thanks to the Republicans AND the Democrats, then take a trip down memory lane and read Krugman’s article from four years ago, The Great Wealth Transfer. It is especially relevant today.  In it he features a wonderful analogy to prove a sense of the stunning increase in inequality throughout the US economy during the past thirty years.  He also blows apart three myths that those from the Beltway and mainstream media often offer to “comfort” us:

        Myth #1 INEQUALITY IS MAINLY A PROBLEM OF  POVERTY
        Myth #2 INEQUALITY IS MAINLY A PROBLEM OF EDUCATION
        Myth #3 INEQUALITY DOESN’T REALLY MATTER.

        Proclaim the Queen!

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          by IfLizWereQueen

          The OUTRAGEOUS double standards of the White House and Wallstreet

          January 8, 2010 in Bailout, Banks, Obama, Obama Administration, The Rich, Wall Street

          It’s OK if Wall Street Banks like Morgan Stanley default by simply walking away from their mortgages, but if ordinary Americans do it, then they are irresponsible and even “immoral”

          Yes!  Their audacity and double standards–one for the rich and one for the rest of us–have actually tumbled to such an undemocratic and obvious two-faced, “its OK for the rich but not you” low!

          In a New York Times article published yesterday titled “Walk Away from Your Mortgage!” by Roger Lowenstein, he tells us that John Courson, President and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told the Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message they will send to their family and their kids.  He was implying that people had a moral responsibility to make good on their loans.

          There are two kinds of people who default on their loans–those who really can’t afford it and those who voluntarily choose not to pay because they have calculated and made a conscious decision to let go a bad debt.

          “.  .  .  Businesses — in particular Wall Street banks — make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral. . .”

          Former Henry Paulson Jr. denounced Americans who walk away from  mortgages on their underwater property is simply a speculator and one who is not honoring his obligation.  Too bad that Paulson was not so censorious of speculation during his 32 year career at Goldman Sachs.

          Even Barack Obama has gotten in on the moral finger wagging! He has urged homeowners to follow the “responsible” course. As Lowenstein reports, HUD-approved housing counselors are supposed to counsel people against foreclosure. In many cases, this means counseling people to throw away money.

          Private equity firms close factories all the time.  This is another form of default.  Members of Wall Street AND the White House who suggest that homeowners who default are immoral while at the same time Wall Street who does it daily and have since the day they set up shop are not, are themselves not only “immoral”, they are “morally bankrupt”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          Roger Lowenstein, an outside director of the Sequoia Fund, is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. His book “The End of Wall Street” is coming out in April.  I’LL BE AMONG THE FIRST TO PURCHASE IT.

          *****************************************************************

          Let’s review LoopHole Larry once again to remind ourselves how the current multimilllionaires in Congress work hand in hand with Wall Street and private equity firms to defraud the rest of  us.  Perhaps Americans will get more serious about taking their money out of Wall Street Banks and putting it into local banks and credit unions–something that the Queen has been advocating for almost a year and Adrianna Huffington has recently begun to chant as well!

          Proclaim the Queen!

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            by IfLizWereQueen

            The wealthy who run our Congress and their wealthy friends like AIG, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, etc. are a damn rude elitist bunch!

            July 10, 2009 in Bailout, Banks, Obama, Obama Administration

            QUEEN’S COMMENTS: Jim’s humorous essay gave me a serious jolt.  We have become so accustomed to rude, dismissive, elitist  behavior from the likes of these people like Tim Geithner and Bush’s Goldman Sachs handmaiden and mentor to Geither (Hank Paulson) that we have stopped expecting/demanding that they act decent.

            Really, it would have been no hair off their elitist asses, for all of the banks who received $BILLIONS from the taxpayers–$BILLIONS to prop them up for their bad business decisions–to have sent their customers a thank  you note and to have published a large thank you note in the newspapers to all the American people.

            But did they?  Hell no.  Instead they acted as if they were entitled to this money, that is was our “duty” to support them.

            AND WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH THIS MONEY BESIDES NOT THANK US FOR IT? Who knows?  But one thing we know for certain:  They have NOT begun to lend it to stimulate the economy.

            QUITE FRANKLY, I THINK THAT MOST OF THESE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS ARE HANGING ONTO THIS MONEY IN AN EFFORT TO CONTINUE THE DOWNTOWN TO TURN PEOPLE AGAINST THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

            They WANT the American people to be angry at the Obama Administration and I think that many of the Clintonites are playing into this as well.

            WHY AREN’T BANKS LENDING THE MONEY AS WAS INTENDED?  WHAT HAS BEEN DONE WITH IT?  THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DESERVE A REAL EXPLANTION!

            NO MORE MONEY TO THESE GREEDY THANKLESS RICH SYCOPHANTS UNTIL THEY START LENDING.

            IF CONGRESS APPROVES MORE HANDOUTS TO THESE BANKS, THEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHOULD LITERALLY MARCH ON WASHINGTON AND REMOVE THEM FROM OFFICE AS THAT SHOULD SURELY BE THE FINAL STRAW WITH THESE MULTIMILLIONAIRES WHO ARE LITERALLY ROBBING US OUT OF OUR HOMES.

            Proclaim the Queen!

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              by IfLizWereQueen

              The Dirty Dozen Scumbag Bankers Plus one more: Geithner

              May 25, 2009 in Bailout, Banks, Economics and Ideology, Obama, Obama Administration, Wall Street

              QUEEN’S COMMENTS: Two months ago to the day, The Rolling Stone published a piece titled “The Dirty Dozen”.  In it they selected the 12 most guilty of all the greedy banking slime.  I would add Geithner  to that list.  He is their filthy handmaiden.

              The Rolling Stone piece is priceless and worth the visit so 1) that your memory is refreshed with what these people have done and 2) so that you remember that nothing has changed, thanks to Obama’s hand picked scumbag banker representative Tim Geithener.  Below is a drawing of the hog at whose teat Geithner suckled:  Henry Paulson.

              Remember him?  He was George Bush’s hand maiden who gave his pig banker friends $800 billion with no strings attached just before Bush and Republicans turned command of Washington over to the hedge fund Democrats.  SOME CHANGE.  Obama forgot to tell us that he spells change as “m-o-r-e-o-f-t-h-e-s-a-m-e

              The Maestro [the man who taught Tim Geithner all that he knows about how to screw the American people out of their money]
              HENRY PAULSON

              WAS CEO of Goldman Sachs (1999-2006); Treasury secretary (2006-2009)
              WHAT HE DID Pushed for end to debt restrictions for banks like Goldman, then arranged big bailout for Goldman.
              WORST MOVE TARP proposal just three pages long; made his decisions “non-reviewable.”
              NOW SAYS “I don’t think we’ve made mistakes on the major decisions.”

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                by IfLizWereQueen

                Bernie Sanders, the “socialist” that conservatives love to hate had it right about the Wall Street Robbery from Day One: Don’t make working people bailout Wall Street.

                April 21, 2009 in Bailout, Banks, Wall Street

                QUEEN’S COMMENTS: Digging through my old posts on the topic of the Wall Street robbery of the American people, I came across this great one on October 2. Too bad more of our elected officials didn’t listen to the wisdom of this “socialist.” We would be in much better shape today.

                ” . . . This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I’m the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Now, maybe I’m the only person in America who thinks that’s a little bit weird, but that is what I think. This bill does not address the major economic crisis we face: growing unemployment, low wages, the need to create decent-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. . .”

                October 2, 2008 people! Our elected officials have been dragging their feet since October 2 in bringing down the curtain on the wild west show for the rich!  And they continue to stall and continue to fork over our taxpayer dollars to multimillionaires who have more money than most of us can even dream of.

                Please go to the Huffington Post to read the full article and even more news on this latest outrage from Congress.

                http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/dont-make-working-people_b_131070.html

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                  by IfLizWereQueen

                  Lend nearly $1 trillion to hedge funds, private equity firms is a solution?

                  March 6, 2009 in Bailout, Banks, Wall Street

                  Queen’s Comment:   OUTRAGE!

                  HELL NO!  And here is the Article from the Washington Post that started my blood to boil this morning:  U.S. to Invite the Wealthy to Invest in the Bailout

                  We are not “inviting” the wealthy to invest in the bailout, what Geithner has planned is the greatest con game so far from Wall Street:  The taxpayers are being asked to BACK the wealthy’s investments in the Bailout.  THAT IS THE TRUTH OF THAT HEADLINE.

                  ****************************************************

                  First all these people are the bottom of the barrel for the scum of Wall Street. They are the ones MOST responsible for this mess.  Asking the American taxpayers to fork over trillions of our hard earned tax dollars to these jackasses who use every tax loop hole in the books and who are majorly responsible for this meltdown in the first place can only be compared to demanding that a rape victim to make love with the rapist.

                  To suggest that the American taxpayer loan money to HEDGE FUNDS and private equity groups is OBSCENE. BEYOND AN INSULT TO THE ORDINARY AMERICANS.

                  ************************************************

                  SOLUTION:  Let the US government act as a hedge fun and private equity firm.  Let the taxpayers make all the profits that would otherwise go to these scumbags!

                  *************************************************

                  None of this surprises me–not with Lord Fauntleroy Geithner, Mr. Junior Hank Paulson, leading the Treasury.  In fact, I have already predicted as much here in my blog.

                  Employee-owned companies and Taxpayers as Hedge Fund Managers–a business model I would like to see the Taxpayers support.

                  Another Taxpayer Ripoff:  Government buy-in of CitiGroup

                  Understanding the Hedge Fund Business that Greenspan now works for

                  If you thought that hedge funds were a thing of the past, guess again.  They have moved off-shore and are back with a vengeance.

                  Looks like Avenue Capital Group are Doing OK These days

                  The Ultimate Shell Game–Derivatives Markets and who do you think plays them?  HEDGE FUNDS.  HELLO WAKE UP PEOPLE.

                  Queen’s Analysis of Paulson’s Snake Oil and His Intentions

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                    by IfLizWereQueen

                    Although unlikely, we can still hope that Obama’s economic policies reflect lessons learned from the financial meltdown

                    January 11, 2009 in Bailout, Economics and Ideology, Globalization, Obama Administration

                    QUEEN’S COMMENT: If ever there were a testimonial for “small is better” and “local, not global”, there is none better than the current financial meltdown.

                    There are a lot of lessons to be be learned, but judging for most of the people that Obama has chosen for his team (left-over Clintonites), we can expect the most important lessons learned to be ignored.

                    At least these lessons are not escaping the observations of many Americans.  For example, I recently read an article by Phillip Longman and T.A. Frank in the Washington Monthly titled:  Too Small to Fail. While the behemoths of Wall Street stumble and fall, humble local bankers are dong just fine, thank you.  Their surprising resilience holds a key lesson for 21st century global finance.

                    For example, take the case of ” .   .   .  Broadway Federal, founded in 1946 to provide loans to the growing African American community of Los Angeles, is a small institution with five branches located in middle-class, largely black neighborhoods of the city. It has eighty-four employees, assets of $390 million, and a loan portfolio divided more or less equally among single-family homes, apartment buildings, churches, commercial real estate, and small businesses.

                    Aesthetically, Broadway Federal’s branches are more evocative of 1972 than of 1946—copious concrete, cheap terrazzo, fluorescent lights, clunky logo. But in 2008, an old-fashioned look—even one from the ’70s—can be an advantage, for it suggests old-fashioned banking. While Broadway Federal may have been less adventurous or less profitable than some of its competitors over the past few years, today it enjoys the traditionalist’s compensation of being both sane and solvent. In fact, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Broadway enjoys a substantially higher return on equity and assets than J. P. Morgan does. (It also has a lower proportion of nonperforming loans.)  .   .   . Today, however, even as many financial institutions are refusing credit, Broadway Federal quietly continues to extend it. One recent recipient was a nonprofit called the Domestic Violence Center of Santa Clarita Valley, which needed $40,000 as a bridge loan in the midst of state budget holdups. Nicole Shellcroft, the executive director of the center, says that no large bank had been willing to lend the money. Under the terms worked out with Broadway Federal, though, the domestic violence center was given a three-month loan for a fee of $900 in interest. . . Naturally, being so closely tied to the fortunes of the community makes small banks more vulnerable to local downturns than large banks. But this isn’t all bad, since it gives local bankers an interest in bringing their town’s business community and civic groups together to solve common problems and find new ways to prosper. For community banks, community involvement is central. . .”

                    ***************************************************

                    Very good lessons here for Mr. New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner appointed Treasury Secretary by Obama–but I rather imagine it all to fall on very deaf ears.  Mr. Geithner helped Mr. Paulson with the $700 billion bailout.  Not only did he fork over billions of American taxpayers money to Wall Street Bankers, he doesn’t even know who got what and if he does, he is not telling.  Great choice Obama.  A New York Wall Street banker to manage (continue to loot) our treasury).  SHAME ON YOU.

                    MORE . . .

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