Trillions for Wall Street -- Zilch for You Know Who

[Octafish]

Some things bear repeating:

Trillions for Wall Street

Zilch for You Know Who

By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch
July 29, 2010

On Tuesday, the 30-year fixed rate for mortgages plunged to an all-time low of 4.56 per cent. Rates are falling because investors are still moving into risk-free liquid assets, like Treasuries. It's a sign of panic and the Fed's lame policy response has done nothing to sooth the public's fears. The flight-to-safety continues a full two years after Lehman Bros blew up.

Housing demand has fallen off a cliff in spite of the historic low rates. Purchases of new and existing homes are roughly 25 per cent of what they were at peak in 2006. Case/Schiller reported on Monday that June new homes sales were the "worst on record", but the media twisted the story to create the impression that sales were actually improving! Here are a few of Monday's misleading headlines: "New Home Sales Bounce Back in June"--Los Angeles Times. "Builders Lifted by June New-home Sales", Marketwatch. "New Home Sales Rebound 24 per cent", CNN. "June Sales of New Homes Climb more than Forecast", Bloomberg.

SNIP...

There's no need for the economy to slip back into recession. It is completely unnecessary. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke knows exactly what needs to be done; how to counter deflationary pressures via bond purchasing programs etc. He has many options even though interest rates are "zero bound". But Bernanke has chosen to do nothing. Intransigence is a political decision. By the November midterms, the economy will be contracting again, unemployment will be edging higher, and the slowdown will be visible everywhere in terms of excess capacity. The Obama economic plan will be repudiated as a bust and the Dems will be swept from office. The bankers will get the political gridlock they desire. Bernanke knows this.

SNIP...

Presently, big business is awash in savings ($1.8 trillion) because consumers are on the ropes and demand is weak. The government's task is simple; make up for worker retrenchment by providing more fiscal and monetary stimulus. If private sector and public sector spending shrink at the same time, the economy will contract very fast and recession will become unavoidable. So, Go Big; create government work programs, help the states, rebuild infrastructure and support green technologies. The economy is not a sentient being; it makes no distinction between "productive" labor and "unproductive" labor. The point is to keep the apparatus operating as close to capacity as possible--which means low unemployment and big deficits.

SNIP...

The cutbacks will ravage local governments, state revenues and public services. Emergency facilities by the Fed provided $11.4 trillion for underwater banks and non banks, but nothing for the states. The GOP is helping the Fed strangle the states by opposing additional aid for Medicare payments and unemployment benefits. Many cities and counties will be forced into bankruptcy while Goldman Sachs rakes in record profits on liquidity provided by Bernanke. It's a disaster.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07292010.html

Something else that bears repeating, the crooks those responsible for this mess should pay for it.

[howaboutme]

1. The game is rigged

Policy and laws are made in the interests of the rich. That is bad enough but they force us to subsidize them too. The entertainers and celebrities and Wall Street and Hollywood have all been subsidized by Wal-Mart workers....not to mention the CEOs and big business. We build them football stadiums and subsidize Hollywood in their movie-making and now we subsidize Wall Street, and it is so the elites are assured that they will always be compensated thousands of times more than average Americans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

[Octafish]

2. The Ultimate Cold Call -- Raul Reyes, FARC and Richard Grasso, NYSE

Have you seen this: Wall Street meets Columbian FARC Rebel Boss?

The Real Deal: NYSE's Richard Grasso and the Ultimate New Business "Cold Call"

Narco-Dollars For Dummies

How The Money Works In The Illicit Drug Trade

Part 3 in a 13 Part Series
By Catherine Austin Fitts
First published in the Narco News Bulletin
Monday, 18 February 2002, 10:13 am

Lest you think that my comment about the New York Stock Exchange is too strong, let's look at one event that occurred before our "war on drugs" went into high gear through Plan Colombia, banging heads over narco dollar market share in Latin America.

In late June 1999, numerous news services, including Associated Press, reported that Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange flew to Colombia to meet with a spokesperson for Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the supposed "narco terrorists" with whom we are now at war.

The purpose of the trip was "to bring a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services" and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia.

Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso's mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market's strength from $500 billion - $1 trillion in annual money laundering - FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.

To understand the threat of decriminalization of the drug trade, just go back to your Sam and Dave estimate and recalculate the numbers given what decriminalization does to drive BIG PERCENT back to SLIM PERCENT and what that means to Wall Street and Washington's cash flows. No narco dollars, no reinvestment into the stock markets, no campaign contributions.

It was only a few days after Grasso's trip that BBC News reported a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress as saying: "Colombia's cocaine and heroin production is set to rise by as much as 50 percent as the U.S. backed drug war flounders, due largely to the growing strength of Marxist rebels"

CONTINUED...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0202/S00069.htm

It should be big news, but ABCNNBCBSFixedNoiseNutworks missed the story.

The real tragedy, besides the giant narcodollar laundrey that is Wall Street, is how America is continually lied to by ommission by its constitutionally mandated watchdogs, the press.

From a citizen's perspective, thank Moon for DU.

[Ignis]

7. Holy crap!

Sometimes, even I'm left in awe of how brazen they've become. :wow:

[w4rma]

3. There is a reason that the bailout was and still is unpopular. (nt)

[Octafish]

4. William Black: "Unlimited Taxpayer Bailout" of FDIC Coming; FDIC Shell Game Hides the Bailout

We the People know something is very wrong. A few even put their finger on it:

William Black: "Unlimited Taxpayer Bailout" of FDIC Coming; FDIC Shell Game Hides the Bailout

We the People know that the only organization with the means to stand up to the ultrarich is the U.S. Government, that's why we elect our representatives. The fact they don't do what we ask should raise more questions than it does.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Not zilch. We get the bill.

[Octafish]

6. Now that you mention it, it IS worse than zilch...

...and it's a bill for trillions in I.O.U.s to the same so and sos who got us in this fix.

So, who does Uncle Sam really work for? We the People or A Few Billionaires? Going by their actions, we certainly know who they answer to:

Warren Buffett Is Unusually Silent on Rating Agencies.

[Ignis]

8. K&R

All they need to do is keep the purse-strings tight until middle America defaults on everything they own, and then swarm in to buy it for pennies on the dollar.

How many times have we seen this in other countries, only to scoff "It can't happen here."

[Octafish]

9. Precisely. Current events make clear the capitalist system is completely corrupt.

What's worse, they've corrupted the government, the only organization that could keep them honest.

Details from William K. Black, a forensic economist who saw the S&L crisis coming and warned us before the current "meltdown."

The Two Documents Everyone Should Read to Better Understand the Crisis

[howaboutme]

10. Greed is incurable

That article link should be read by all. The boundless greed of these financiers prevented the decision makers from asking the questions that they didn't want answered because that would have made them culpable.

None of these bastards will ever be held accountable because they (the corporations, individual capitalist elite and financiers)have so much more untaxed disposable income that they can buy off our politicians and government with their left over chump change. The Supreme Court could have reversed this trend but instead they said the bribes are legal free speech. I believe they are bought off too.

The financial elite who actually perpetrated and encouraged the fraud that led to the mortgage meltdown financial elite, will never be held accountable by government and our justice system will never prosecute them with vigor. Why? because the media will instead waste air and print time on celebrities, sports and the American Idol instead of stirring up public anger exposing these individuals.

Worth watching again is the SNL skit of 2008 that skewered EVERYONE including Bush, Democrats, home buyers, George Soros, and Herbert and Marion Sandler who themselves profited enormously from the fraud and greed that was at the root of the mortgage crisis. The Sandlers sold their Golden West and trash mortgages to Wachovia for billions. The skit was tough to find as NBC oddly removed it from their SNL archives, but still worth watching even if the host site is BS.

The real bottom line is that neither the media nor the government will touch any of these scoundrels because once the discovery process begins, and they expose just one elitist participant, the dominoes will start to fall for many others. That has been the reason that government has been lax in prosecutions of crimes of high importance such as Katrina, 9-11, Iraq War, etc.. Pandora's box is opened by discovery, and that is likely why Bush was not impeached.