"This Was Never About the Little Guy" (guest post)

There were approximtely $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans outstanding in the United States by the end of 2007. By the first quarter of 2009, there were forclosure filings against approximately 4.4 million properties. If it was only the subprime market's fault, $1.4 trillion would have covered the entire problem, right?

Yet the Federal Reserve, the treasury, and the FDIC forked out $13 trillion to fix the housing “correction”… With all that money, the government could have bought up every residential mortgage in the country – there were about $11.9 trillion  worth at the end of December 2008 – and still have had about a trillion left over to buy homes for every American who couldn’t afford them.

--Nomi Prin, former VP at Goldman Sachs from her book It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street  (with thanks for the reference to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine).  Ms. Prin "frequently makes the point that the bailouts were more about paying off bets than they were about stabilizing the economy."

We've been had as chumps.

Try to have a great weekend, y'all.

Links:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mailbag-friedman-naked-swaps-and-madoff-20110228

http://www.nomiprins.com/it-takes-a-pillage/

And you're angry at THIS president and his administration?

I don't care who you are, whether you're a Conservative, a Republican, an independent, Tea Party member, Libertarian, whomever, if you're in any way angry at this president and his administration for what you see as going into "Socialism" and "big government" and a social-welfare state, honey, you have another think coming.

Yes, come with me now as we once again look back on that last administration and what they and the Fed did for big business, specifically the big banks in this country and around the world.  Let's put this current administration into perspective.

That last administration, via Mr. Bernanke and now former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson did with our government--and our money.

They gave the following low-interest loans to the following companies, and in these amounts:

Goldman Sachs received nearly $600 billion; 

Morgan Stanley received nearly $2 trillion; 

Citigroup received $1.8 trillion; 

Bear Stearns, received nearly $1 trillion, 

Merrill Lynch, received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.

From Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, VT) today at The Huffington Post:

We also learned that the Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.

Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities.

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.

Senator Sanders asks a very pertinent question:  Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?

Mind you, that last administration kept all this quiet and totally out of the public's knowledge until only recently because Sen. Sanders had to put into law a provision, asking for a breakdown of just what exactly was given to whom but for all the complainers and haters out there, of this administration, I ask you--where was your outrage back when the ultra-white and very-privileged George W. Bush and Co. were spending like drunken sailors and starting pre-emptive and illegal wars, all in our name?

If you're going to be raising hell about something, you ought to be raising it about the guy who gave over the candy store to the rich fatcats, not the guy who is, now, trying to stand up for the everybody else in the country and not the wealthiest top tier.

You knuckleheads.

Link to original post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/a-real-jaw-dropper-at-the_b_791091.html

Information and education time again, folks

Okay, you didn't get off your sofas and go see "Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room", as you should have so now, make sure you get up and go see this movie:  "Inside Job". 

For the love of pete, people, this is what's going on in your country.  It's also why you shouldn't vote back in the people who allowed this to happen.

Link:  http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

Maybe the EU can do what we can't

I've written here a bit on how corrupt Goldman Sachs has been in the last few years--at least--and how they're at least partly culpable for the financial crash of the last few years, the mess we're in now and for the collapse of AIG and the taking of millions (billions?) of government tax dollars over that collapse. (See Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail" , among others).

If you haven't read anything about it, it makes terrific, though depressing, important information and reading. You should check it out.

Now, word comes out of Europe just today that "former IMF man Simon Johnson wrote that he thinks the EU will indeed ban Goldman."

According to Mr. Johnson: "Goldman made some $300 million over a short period of time setting up swaps constructions intended to fool Europe -and investors- about Greece's real financial situation, and it continued such efforts as late in the game as three months ago. It's all certainly immoral, if not downright illegal.

This on top of the wholescale theft they've made of the US markets in the last few years, at minimum.

So this is great. Maybe something can come from all this. Perhaps the EU can and will do what we haven't done on this and that is do an in-depth study of their actions, see if anything was blatantly illegal and then, if so, pursue legal action against them and, as the article states, maybe throw them out of the EU.

As I so frequently say, here's hoping.

But what really galls me is the Goldman Sachs people have been in--and still are--our own government for years, writing policy and policies that directly benefit them and the entire banking community.

And the American people stand for it.

Remember Hank Paulson, the guy who originally came up with the $700 billion TARP fund to save the banker's backsides?

Straight out of Goldman.

Current Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner?

Same thing.

The simple fact is, we need to get and keep Goldman Sachs--and other company and people like them--out of the White House and our government.

We need to get these foxes out of our chicken coops.