Why doesn't the TV talk about where all the money Wall Street and the Big Banks lost went?

[Octafish]

To where did the money disappear?
The talking heads never seem to bring it up.
It's not on the radio much, if at all.
And I don't recall seeing it asked or mentioned in the newspapers.



We the People are on the hook for a $2 Trillion Bailout of Wall Street and the Big Banks.
In exchange, we got something worse than an I.O.U.: we got Wall Street and the Big Bank's I.O.U.s to the tune of another $8 Trillion.
Voila! The national debt doubles in an astounding six months and the people responsible for losing the money -- from George W Bush on down -- are off the hook.
Nice, huh?

Wall Street's Scams, Lies and Frauds

By Danny Schechter, AlterNet
AlterNet
Posted on May 26, 2009, Printed on May 27, 2009

EXCERPT...

Criminologist William K. Black, a former bank regulator and expert on crimes committed by the men at the top -- so-called control frauds referencing the practices of CEOS in control at big corporations -- studied these reports, pointing out that by 2008 there were only 62,000 "criminal referrals" in this industry with only agencies reporting crimes "mandated" by law to do so.

Only one-third of these illegal practices were even reported and, then, hardly any in unregulated sectors which, in turn, dispensed 80 percent of them. These were the mortgages Wall Street bought, securitized, sliced and diced, borrowed against and resold under false pretenses. Did they know? You bet they did.

Black estimates there have been a half-million fraudulent mortgage cases annually that should have been prosecuted, but the FBI only has the capacity to handle 500 per annum because most of its white-collar-crime fighters were reassigned to the war on terror.

This is common says Sam Antar, a former, or maybe not so former, admitted white-collar criminal who laughs at government attempts to control the crimes:

"Because the government doesn't have the resources to do it, and the white-collared criminals know it. The government basically ceded complicated crimes right after Enron. They ceded prosecuting complicated crimes. You see today, like the AIG thing, uh, Andrew Cuomo gets up there in front of the microphone and says, 'We're gonna get those bonuses back!!' Any schmuck prosecutor could've gotten those bonuses back. Where are the complicated crimes that are being investigated? All we're getting today is small dinky guys getting prosecuted here and there for relatively easy crimes to investigate."

The goal of control frauds are to defeat all attempts at controlling fraud and artificially, through accounting tricks, to inflate the value of shares, promote a bubble or in short, "optimize the firm for fraud." He says the control fraudsters are the real super-predators producing greater losses than all property crimes put together.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/140160/

My guess to where the money went is Switzerland, via the Cayman Islands and everywhere else offshore expert at laundering Big Money.

[dipsydoodle]

1. The complete loss of such large sums

just blows my mind.

Only unwinding ALL deals would reveal the answers and given the amount at stake I'm surprised that nothing appears to have happened along those lines.

[Octafish]

3. If it weren't crooked, the bailout would do exactly that -- determine who-took-what? and how?

Here's more on the subject, including details from Mr. Black:

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

[Marksbrother]

2. How do you decide which MSM stories to believe?

Would you believe them if they DID say what happened to the money? If not, why not? Do you believe MOST MSM stories such as
WMD, the small country of N. Korea is a threat to the U.S., etc.?

[Octafish]

4. MSM = Corporate McPravda

They make money peddling propaganda. So no, I don't trust them.

The "Free press" is the only business named in the Constitution.
The Founders knew the unfettered exchange of information was needed
in order to maintain an informed citizenry and democracy.
Today's media barons have failed in their responsibilities.
That's why I call them, "Traitors."

[Javaman]

5. Because the MSM has decided that info is sooooo yesterday

we are now onto the MSM parroting the freeps and their condemnation of Sotomayor.

[Octafish]

6. Good point. I'd add the same CLASS of scum owns BOTH -- the pillaged funds and Corporate McPravda.

You are right, Javaman. Understanding that today we have a 24-hour newscycle and the Wall Street Big Bank Welfare check was mailed out months ago, our "Free press" does need to do its duty and analyze what this means for the nation's future.

The MSM has long-forgotten Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and that there were no WMDs in Iraq. And it IS really impressive how fast the rightwing Sotomayor memes got to rattling around the public talking heads, full-blast. The thing is, We the People need some answers for the above and the missing Trillions.

Are you familiar with the work of Lucy Komisar? She's been documenting how the rich and crooks have been moving their money offshore for decades:

OFFSHORE BANKING:
U.S.A.'S SECRET THREAT

The Blacklisted Journalist
COLUMN NINETY-TWO, JUNE 1, 2003
(Copyright © 2003 The Blacklisted Journalist)

(Lucy Komisar, a New York-based journalist whose articles on international affairs have appeared in major U.S. and foreign publications, is writing a book about the offshore bank and corporate secrecy system.)

In November 1932, deputy Fabien Albertin took the floor of the National Assembly in Paris to denounce tax evasion by eminent French personalities-politicians, judges, industrialists, church dignitaries, and directors of newspapers-who were hiding their money in Switzerland.

"The minister of finance knows very well that for ten years, the concern of all his predecessors has been to track down this fraud . . . " he declared. "However, till now, the information one has gotten has been extremely vague. When documents arrive, they are formless notebooks in which holders of accounts are represented only as numbers. Employees of the banks don't know the names of account holders. These names are known only to the director of the bank, who the clients forbid to correspond with them, so anxious are they to preserve anonymity."

He said, "If one reads the Swiss newspapers this morning, one sees that public opinion in Switzerland dreads the massive shrinking of sums that have been deposited in its banks---of which it enjoys exclusive profit."

There had been a raid on a building on the rue de la Trémoille in the aristocratic district of the Champs-Élysées, where officials of a Swiss bank had a five-room apartment. Police had passed through a crowd of impatient clients in the waiting room, entered the office, and seized all available documents.

Albertin argued that the operation should have occurred earlier, as the business had gone on without interruption for ten days. Even so, the police collected 245,000 French francs, 2,000 Swiss francs, and even more important, an index, a cashbook, a file, and ten large notebooks with two thousand names.

A parliamentarian shouted, "We want to know them!"

Albertin answered, "The minister knows . . ."

But the finance minister declared, "Ah! No! Mr. Albertin, I don't know this list at all."

And Albertin replied, "I am going to satisfy your curiosity. Some will say, 'Ah! You socialists are happy to dishonor political adversaries and show that there are classes in society!' Yes, there are classes. And in this scandal, the ruling elite of society shows its selfishness and unwillingness to obey French law!"

His list included deputies, senators, and judges, whose role, he pointed out, was to make and apply the laws. He called them men of "a particularly ticklish patriotism" who, he noted with irony, "probably are unaware that the money they deposit abroad is lent by Switzerland to Germany."

That Switzerland was Hitler's banker was already known. Albertin noted sardonically that such people never made loans to the French defense effort. He added that the list included a dozen generals, even the comptroller of the army.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column92e.html

It's safe to say we are not alone in our concern for our country. I'd feel a heck of a lot better knowing the DoJ had rounded up some of the crooks, already.

[MindPilot]

7. They do; it all went to the grossly overpaid UAW members

and the Messicans who come here because for some reason illegal immigrants have better health benefits in the US that her citizens do and of course all those other government handouts that empty the pockets of real working americans who give money to the rich so they can make jobs.

Haven't you been listening?

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[scheming daemons]

9. Because TV's can't really talk?

:shrug:

[Octafish]

11. You don't say? How then do they get the voices to come out?

Seriously. Like, when have they got around to asking: "Where did all that money go?"

A Lot of Our Money Is Buried in the Cayman Islands -- Let's Get It Back

By David Cay Johnston, The Nation
Posted on May 16, 2009, Printed on May 16, 2009
AlterNet

The Cayman Islands are well known to those seeking sun, sand and sea--and for their hospitality to US corporations seeking to escape taxes, launder money and use other discreet financial services. The islands' tax dodgers help multinational corporations move jobs offshore; they also give aid and comfort to terrorists, drug dealers and divorcing spouses trying to hide money. Honest taxpayers have to make up for the revenues lost through this offshore cheating in three ways: we pay more in taxes, we get fewer government services and we incur rising government debt. Interest on that debt, which doubled under the Bush administration, now equals all the individual income taxes paid from New Year's to around June 10. And that cost means less government investment in research, education and the infrastructure on which commerce depends. Untaxed money hiding in the Caymans and other tax havens means the rest of us pay a higher price for less civilization.

In short, the Caymans, and other tax havens, are parasites that weaken the United States and other developed nations.

President Obama proposed on May 4 to crack down on offshore tax cheating; that proposal does not go nearly far enough. Instead of settling for a dime on the dollar, as Obama's plan would do, let's get serious about offshore tax cheating, both legalized and criminal. Let's do what we did to halt the imagined threats of communists in Grenada, depose a drug-dealing president in Panama and find those imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Let's invade the Caymans!

The islands, which belong to Britain, have no military and just 300 or so police. An invasion force composed of tax lawyers, forensic auditors and a handful of computer technicians could execute a hostile takeover without firing a shot.

The Caymans are not really a country; they are a law firm posing as one. More than 12,000 "companies" operate out of a single building known as Ugland House, home to the law firm Maples & Calder. As Obama put it, "Either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam." Under Caymans law these companies are barred from doing any business in the Caymans except hiding assets and profits. That means shares of stock, bonds and cash may technically be owned in the Caymans--which claims to be the world's fifth-largest center of bank deposits--but are really housed in New York, Greenwich, Houston, San Francisco. There is $1.9 trillion in bank deposits in the Caymans--money actually invested in the United States and other countries but invisible to the IRS.

The Clinton administration enabled this through a rule known as "check the box," which helped companies funnel profits into untaxed havens. US tax rules, liberally expanded by the Bush administration, enabled frauds like Enron to create hundreds of paper companies in the Caymans and other tax havens like Liechtenstein, Turks and Caicos, and the Isle of Man. Enron, as I revealed in a New York Times story in January 2002, paid no taxes because it had created hundreds of paper companies in these places. A subsequent investigation by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation uncovered internal documents describing Enron's tax department as a "profit center." Dick Cheney's Halliburton subsidiary, KBR--the old Kellogg Brown & Root construction company--has at least 21,000 employees paid via Caymans subsidiaries to escape taxes. KBR hired executives through these paper companies, enabling them to evade Social Security and Medicare taxes on their salaries and bonuses, much of which the taxpayers provided through Pentagon contracts.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/140056/

Again, seeing how so few read The Nation or a newspaper these days, it's not hard to miss this important story.
So, that's old news to whom?

[HamdenRice]

10. Maybe because anyone looking at foreclosed properties on their streets knows where the money went?

We the People are on the hook for a $2 Trillion Bailout of Wall Street and the Big Banks.
In exchange, we got something worse than an I.O.U.: we got Wall Street and the Big Bank's I.O.U.s to the tune of another $8 Trillion.

If this were what had happened, that would be a pretty good deal, don't ya think? That would have meant that we quadrupled our money, borrowing $2 trillion and ending up owning $8 trillion in assets.

As it turns out, the TARP program is profitable to the Treasury, but not that profitable. We'll get our money back plus about 5% return.

Voila! The national debt doubles in an astounding six months and the people responsible for losing the money -- from George W Bush on down -- are off the hook.
Nice, huh?

I know there are a lot of right wing gold bugs who hate the "new New Deal" stimulus package, but even right wing gold bugs need to stick to basic facts, numbers and accounting.

I don't think even the right wing gold bugs think that the national debt doubled in the last 6 months just because the Democrats came into office and passed the stimulus bill. The increase in the national debt in the last 6 months was more like 10%, and most liberal and progressive economists said it was necessary in order to avoid a depression, and that it should actually have been bigger.

I think any truthful right wing gold bug would acknowledge that the national debt doubled under Bush -- not under Obama and the Democrats -- as a result of tax cuts for the rich, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the explosion of military spending for new weapons systems.

I don't see how even the most biased right wing gold bug can blame the increase in the debt on Obama's stimulus package.

[Octafish]

13. So, delinquent borrowers and falling real estate values are the root cause?

I don’t think so.

Call me a poser or a wannabe gold bug, I don’t care which. Sorry I wasn’t clear.

No where do I blame Obama for doubling the national debt – I based it on what the bailout numbers show. We, as a nation, have committed $2 Trillion to the banksters and are on the hook for an additional $8 Trillion more for their toxic assets. Negative $2 Trillion plus negative $8 Trillion comes to negative $10 Trillion.

Yes, I know who’s to blame for doubling the national debt. Before it became somewhat fashionable, I suggest a Jubilee a while back to alleviate the burden on the middle classes and poor: We the People Need Jubilee: Lion's Share of the National Debt Incurred under GOP Pretzeldents.

Better still would be a national fraud and financial crimes commission charged with investigating the criminality on the part of those entrusted to keep the economy sound. It'd be something along the lines of the Pecora Commission during the Depression. Better minds than mine have suggested it, Pelosi calls for panel to probe Wall Street.

[HamdenRice]

19. Where do you get your numbers?

When anyone acquires an asset for $100, they are not $100 in debt; they are $100 richer.

If they spend cash or borrow $100 to purchase an asset for $100, then it's a wash, although if they borrow, they have increased their leverage and hence their risk. If the assets go bad, only then has the borrower/purchaser gone $100 in debt.

Most of the bailout has been asset purchases. Given that the big banks are bitching about wanting to pay back the TARP asset purchases, and asking to do so, it would appear that those assets (preferred stock in commercial banks) are good assets. In fact, it looks like the TARP 1 bailout is going to be unwound soon, as a net profit to the Treasury.

The biggest asset purchases, however, have been by the Fed. Those purchases (over $1 trillion) were of commercial paper because the money market funds froze up. Inasmuch as the money markets have not "broken the buck" again, all evidence shows that those asset purchases also have turned out to be profitable.

So where do you get this $8 trillion number?

[DemReadingDU]

20. CNNMoney.com's bailout tracker

CNN is keeping track, ongoing list, last updated 5/12/09

http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/bailouttracker/index.html

[HamdenRice]

21. Yes, but are you reading it correctly -- as a balance sheet?

You realize that you have to distinguish between expenditures (AIG) and income paying investments (TARP 1, Fed commercial paper program), right?

[DemReadingDU]

22. When I first saw the CNN list last fall

I thought it was a convenient place to see who was receiving our taxpayer money.

Income? Maybe some of those instruments pay income, but I have never seen any list showing how much we get back

[HamdenRice]

26. There have been lots of reports of TARP 1 dividends being paid & the terms are online

TARP 1 was a purchase by the Treasury of preferred stock in the banks. The banks are required to pay 5% mandatory dividend on a quarterly basis. That's about $17.5 billion per year on $350 billion nationalization investment. Plus they are required to pay back the entire $350 billion in a few years or face steeper dividend payments.

It looks like TARP 1 worked. The banks are stabilized and asking to pay back the money, meaning that the Treasury stabilized the system while making a hefty profit.

There have been lots of reports in the financial press about the banks making their quarterly dividend payments.

The Fed program was primarily a purchase of commercial paper -- short term corporate debt. Commercial paper gets paid back in 30, 60, 90 or 180 days, so most of it has been paid back and reborrowed. All of that paper pays interest, and there have been no reports of the money markets breaking the buck, so it's almost certain that the Fed also is making quite a lot of money on its bailout. Commercial paper pays about 3%, and with a peak commitment of about $1.5 trillion, that means a profit of around $45 billion on an annualized basis -- but I don't think they will have to hold on to it for an entire year.

[DemReadingDU]

27. There should be some kind of a balance sheet

I wish CNN would add a column to show how much the banks have paid back. It's already a given, that the money to the auto companies is not going to be paid back.

[TheMadMonk]

12. "The Money" no. Some money? Certainly.

A lot of "The Money" never really existed except as artificially inflated valuations and artefacts of financial trickery.

But while "The Money" exists, (in tulip bulbs, dot coms, or whatever) it can be manipulated, and through various instruments be sold or otherwise traded.

But until you actually cash out your investment (and do it at the right time) "The Money" only has virtual value.

Market manipulation can concentrate real wealth by positioning yourself as a secured creditor so that in the event of a collapse you recover a larger proportion of the spoils, concrete assets being the most desirable.

The unsecured at best are left to write off their investment, and at worst are left with an undivestible asset that is toxic, exacting an ongoing financial burden from its possessor. In effect they are left to create "The Money" after the fact.


Those running this scam recognise something that too many people overlook.

It matters less what the dollar value of your holdings is, than what percentage of the available holdings are in your possession.

By arranging matters so that concrete assets fall into their hands when things go titsup the movers and shakers are able to sell those assets all over again when the market picks up.

[truedelphi]

14. Since lately, some people on DU want to say that only 3 Trillion

Has been spent, I am docuimenting how and where the first 7 trillion or so was supposedly disbursed.

See this URL here:
http://tinyurl.com/ot2f68

And as far as your question, Octafish, even though most Americans can no longer even dream of signing up for a credit card, do you notice the numerous ads for the same on TV? You don't think all those advertising revenues will pay to shut down the news teams from looking too hard into one of the biggest scandals of our era. (The lies and crimes of Bush Co being perhaps bigger, though right now, not as expensive as what Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner have done.)

[DemReadingDU]

16. CNNMoney.com's bailout tracker

Even more extensive than Mish, and it shows where 10.5 trillion of our money went. This is an ongoing list, last updated 5/12/09. For family and friends who don't read blogs, I have sent them this CNN link. They think the bailouts are good because it will help the economy recover.
:crazy:

http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/bailouttracker/index.html

[truedelphi]

17. Oh thank you very much. That is a great improvement.

I had a CNN Money link, but it was outdated (though Correct)

This is up to date. and constantly updated!

[Speck Tater]

15. The money didn't "go" anywhere. It simply ceased to exist. Search: "Fractional Reserve Banking" nt

[DemReadingDU]

18. When the stock market was up to 14,000 in 2007

People (banks, hedgefunds, etc.) sold their portfolios and made gazillions. Somebody got very wealthy in 2007 before the stock market crashed. The smart people got out early with their gains, the rest of us are stuck with losses.

This is continuing today with the manipulations of the market. Somebody rallys it up to get out their gains and suckers people in thinking the recovery is just around the corner. Then these same people manipulate the market downward and people lose again.

But if you take a house worth 100000 in early 1990, and sold it in 2006 for 400000, and now worth only $150000, then that kind of money didn't go anywhere. It's what people will pay, at that time.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

23. What money? It's been so long ago (a few months), that the media figures the people

have forgotten all about it. They've also given us other baubles to distract.

[Me.]

24. You Might Be Interested In This Thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5735574

[windoe]

25. Because they get a kickback for staying quiet

truly, they get paid for not telling this story. Americans got robbed of all our money, plain and simple. If the TeeVee told this story, there would be a freaking revolution. Only some people are allowed to be awake, the rest should stay medicated, tired, misinformed and keep fighting amongst themselves....okee I will stop now.
Have a great evening!!