This is a "must listen" Democracy Now with guest William Greider

[Postman]

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/29/economic_stimulus_moves_to_senate_following

[Idealism]

1. K & R for Amy Goodman!

[navarth]

2. most definitely always k & r for Amy. eom

[Enthusiast]

3. K & R. I like what William

is saying, he is exactly right. But I have zero hope that corrective measures will be undertaken.

[Octafish]

4. Greider's on the ball. Thanks to him, Amy Goodman and Postman.

Just one money quote:

I’ve been writing for some months, the system is not just broken and not just injured; it is collapsed. And as long as the government continues to play putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, I think it will fail. That’s not an ideological statement. It’s just—I think it’s the reality.

[glinda]

5. The system is broken. Thanks to the Republicans.

[Octafish]

7. The BFEE always seems to have been wherever there once was money.

A sampler:

Know your BFEE: Goldmine Sacked or The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever

Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit



What's even worse, they also are warmongers and traitors.

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

[burythehatchet]

6. I'm sure you read the Village Voice article, which was phenomenal

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-28/news/what-cooked-the-world-s-economy

I left this comment....

Here's a simple analogy of the "bailout"/TARP program. The biggest gamblers in the world discovered the game was fixed, but because the corporatocracy insists on continuing to try and convince us that the game is NOT fixed, those big gamblers are being paid off for their losses. THAT IS WHY THEY WILL NOT TELL US WHO GOT THE MONEY.

[Octafish]

8. Bloomberg. Bucket Shops. Credit Derivatives. AIG.

Reading about those types makes me reach back to the whole in my pocket where my wallet once was.

EXCERPT...

People still seem surprised to read that hedge principals have raked in billions of dollars in a single year. They shouldn't be. These subprime-time players knew how to score. The scam bled AIG white. In mid-September, when it was on the ropes, AIG received an astonishing $85 billion emergency line of credit from the Fed. Soon, that was supplemented by another $67 billion. Much of that money, to use the government's euphemism, has already been "drawn down." Shamefully, neither Washington nor AIG will explain where the billions went. But the answer is increasingly clear: It went to counterparties who bought derivatives from Cassano's shop in London.

-----------------------

Imagine if a ring of cashiers at a local bank made thousands of bad loans, aware that they could break the bank. They would be prosecuted for fraud and racketeering under the anti-gangster RICO Act. If their counterparties—the debtors—were in on the scam and understood that they didn't have to pay off the loans, they could be charged, too. In fact, this scenario played out at subprime-pushing outlets of a host of banks, including Washington Mutual (acquired last year by JP Morgan Chase, which itself received a $25 billion bailout); IndyMac (which was seized by FDIC regulators); and Lehman Brothers (which went belly-up). About 150 prosecutions of this type of fraud are going forward.

SOURCE: http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-28/news/what-cooked-the-world-s-economy

That sounds like the same M.O. they, um, employed in the Savings and Loan scam. Legalized bank robbery with the taxpaying mopes left with the tab. Difference now is that the tab is bigger and we get infinitely less than nothing back -- we're left holding $600 Trillion in I.O.U.s.

Thank you, burythehatchet! The article puts things into crystal-clear terms. And it's made me very, very angry.

[burythehatchet]

9. The priority is to make faceless (and shameless) counterparties whole for their bets

while ignoring the pain of ordinary people. This whole thing is a complete scam and the more I keep turning it over and over and looking at it every which way, I always come to the same conclusion, we exist to serve financial elite.

I really do believe that they pushed it too far though, as greed will always do, and now the reckoning is about to occur. It won't be pretty.