Paulson, Bernacke & The Big Bankers Should Be Made Desitute

[stopbush]

I am really pissed after watching tonight's Frontline program. These ghouls have ruined millions of lives. Their actions almost sent us into a Depression that would have made the 30s look like a day at Disneyland.

Yet, they are all comfortable post-meltdown with their ill-gotten billions in personal wealth, wealth made by destroying the wealth of millions of others.

What is their punishment? That the world regards them a little less well? That their personal stock has dropped a point or two with the general public? That they'll need to shave a foot off the length of their next yacht purchase?

You want to send a MESSAGE to Wall Street and then world? Then strip these motherfuckers of their personal assets. I'm sorry, but if millions of people are going to lose their homes, get foreclosed on, see their investments plunge in value, have their credit rating ruined for the next decade, lose their jobs and end up homeless or living with relatives, then why shouldn't the men who engineered this debacle be made to PAY? They deserve to be made paupers, all of them.

Time to get the torches and pitchforks out.

[Muttocracy]

1. I'm watching it now online and am part-way through...

I'm ignorant about the economy, but it seems like they REALLY didn't know what to do and were making it up as they went along.

It always amazes me that free-market types will rib ecologists who can't predict climate change to the exact date and degree, or weather forecasts that aren't perfect, but they put their faith in the stock markets and financial systems and have little ability to predict what will happen in them.

[truedelphi]

7. Unfortunately Frontline so skewered the truth that it amazes even cynical me

SO much for PBS being heads and shoulders above all the rest.

People would be better off watching "From Freedom to Fascism" by Aaron Russo. At least Russo is trying to find out the truth.

Whereas Frontline basically canonized Paulson. The sentence that got me most was "The thing about it that was hard for Paulson" blah blah blah about how hard it was for Paulson to come to terms with offering bailouts to his friends and buddies, while letting his arch enemies at Lehman Brothers go down the tubes.

None of this has been hard for Paulson, or his henchman buddy Kashkari. The nation would have learned far more if Frontline had simply used one hour's worth of YouTube Videos of Issa and Kucinich questioning Paulson and Kashkari. Instead, we are to believe that Geithner, who looked the other way and didn't insist on any investigation into Madoff, is pure as driven snow. And the important fact that Elliot Spitzer, had his reputation destroyed. Sure Spitzer might have played fast and furious with his personal funds, but he was about to divulge the Madoff scenario back in spring of last year. So then they got him for his prostitute use.

[Kool Kitty]

2. I watched that, too.

Did you also see the CNBC special "House of Cards"? The question that I have is-what the fuck happened to all the money? All these banks are nearly insolvent.

[sandnsea]

4. It's air, like oil speculation

They speculated the price of mortgage securities just like they speculate the price of oil The sale of those securities drove up the stock price of the companies that sold them, like Bear Stearn. When the bubble popped, the prices fell. There wasn't any real money, it was all air. Just like oil going from $40 to $100 and back down again. And we the people suffer on the way up and on the way down. We need caps on trading anything that directly affects the population.

[stopbush]

5. The money was all imaginary - wealth on paper only in the derivative market.

The house of cards fell apart when Bear Stearn had its chit called in. They didn't have assets to cover their debts and went insolvent.

It's like your employer gave you a check for a million dollars. He based that check on the value you would bring to his company over 15 years. He tells you not to cash the check right now, but to keep it in a drawer for 3 years. In the meanwhile, you get a loan from a bank based on that million dollars you have sitting in the drawer. You buy a nice house. You even get it remodeled, telling the remodeler that you'll pay him soon enough.

Then, your boss goes out of business. That million dollar check is now worthless. You don't really have the money for the mortgage or the remodeler. What looked good on paper - ie: the future value you would bring to his business - was nothing but speculation with nothing of actual value behind it.

[Kool Kitty]

6. Thanks, to both you and sandandsea.

Now I get it. It is the same kind of thing that caused the first Great Depression. Damn the ones who did this, and damn the ones that turned their heads and allowed this to happen.

[norepubsin08]

3. I hope they have security protection

because some one is going to kill them...and I gotta say, there wouldn't be much sympathy coming from me.

[truedelphi]

8. Hope you get one or two more rec's to get onto the Greatest Page.

[Selatius]

9. I would dare venture that if this happened in Europe, they would be dragged out and executed.

They're rioting in Eastern Europe precisely because the conditions have gotten so bad. They thought it was bad in the 1980s under a stagnating Soviet command-economy, but things now have pushed them to the brink.

This is what the French did when they rebelled against a system that allowed an economy to become so unbalanced and unequal that you could have a situation where the wealthy party it up, while the poor literally die of starvation at the same time:

[aquart]

10. Well, hopefully they invested with Stanford.