Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World - Time to Shut Them Down

[JackRiddler]

How did the Wall Street banks buy up junk mortgages, package these into securities, and sell these to conservative investors, municipalities and pension funds around the world? The millennial fraud of the real estate bubble caused the financial crash and the new depression, but the bankers didn't care because this was a condition of their plunder. Even the ones whose institutions failed made awe-inspiring fortunes. The banks that survived - entirely thanks to a transfer of trillions of dollars of wealth from the people and the Fed to their coffers - are now bigger and more powerful, and control a larger share of the market. From their perspective, the results so far are splendid. And very much as intended: the rich are richer, and fewer, and that is good.

This successful global confidence game would have been impossible without the "confidence," and that was provided by the ratings agencies. Their activity was at the heart of the fraud. They took payment from the banks who issued the securities, didn't bother to examine the securities (in many cases could not have understood them if they tried), and dutifully placed the magic stamp on them: an AAA rating.

Most institutional investors also did not understand these securities and normally would have considered them too risky to buy. They would have been scared off by a junk rating. But they bought the fraudulent MBS and CDO papers because of AAA ratings, which they thought meant a sure thing.

Moody’s made the fraud possible on this scale. Without them, the securities-driven real estate bubble could have never got that big. The meltdown would not have been as dramatic. The depression might not be happening.

Ah, but the gangsters who came away with the epic booty would have had to make do with fewer billions in swag, and this was intolerable to them.

The major ratings agencies, like the Wall Street banks, are criminal organizations. Every time you hear someone from Moody's or Standard and Poor on the radio, you should know that a Tony Soprano would have greater legitimacy, except a Tony Soprano would never be allowed on the radio to talk about the state of “the economy” or the need to cut social “entitlements.” He’d only be allowed to talk about his court cases.

Far worse, these are criminal organizations that have been rewarded for crime. They have prospered. They fear no punishment. They have learned that crime pays. They have been given every incentive to continue helping their clients steal anything that isn't bolted to a rock. And the rock, too.

Worst of all, these are criminal organizations committed by faith and by corporate charter to the doctrine of class war as practiced by the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind," as ADAM SMITH himself called profiteers in The Wealth of Nations.

They should have been shut down and their records should have been seized for a wide-ranging criminal investigation. That is what happened with Arthur Andersen and Enron.

Instead, the killers have been re-armed and let loose to kill again.

And now they are plotting their greatest attack yet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/business/global/16rating.html?hp

Credit Agency Warns U.S. and Others of Risk to Top Rating
By DAVID JOLLY
Published: March 15, 2010

PARIS — Major Western economies have moved “substantially” closer to losing their top-notch credit ratings, with the United States and Britain under the most pressure, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday in a reminder that the global debt crisis is not limited to the small or weak. The ratings of the Aaa governments — which also include Germany, France, Spain and the Nordic countries — are currently “stable,” Moody’s analysts wrote in the report. But, it added, “their ‘distance-to-downgrade’ has in all cases substantially diminished.”

“Growth alone will not resolve an increasingly complicated debt equation,” Moody’s said. “Preserving debt affordability” — the ratio of interest payments to government revenue — “at levels consistent with Aaa ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion.”

That difficulty has been well-illustrated recently in Greece and Portugal, with strikes and protests as citizens hit the streets to oppose tough austerity measures that directly reduce entitlements and state benefits. “It was to be expected that attention wouldn’t long be restricted to Southern Europe but would shift to other countries with big debts,” Michael Heise, chief economist for the German insurer Allianz in Munich, said.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany have always been rated triple-A by Moody’s, with the United States first rated in 1949. Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s, stressed that none of their ratings were “threatened so far.” But he did differentiate among the top countries, noting that Britain and the United States are in the toughest position.

What dark pope was ever given such power?

By what authority do these villains who defrauded the world place themselves on a throne, and pass judgement on the states and nations of the world? - Today California and Greece, tomorrow the United States and Britain, the day after Germany and Japan.

The Wall Street banks failed, entirely by their own action. Their terror was almost at an end, but they raised it to a final crescendo. And it worked: We the People were tapped to rescue them.

Now the Wall Street mob come to rob the very same nations and states who rescued them of a few interest points more, and to destroy and discredit any and all entities or people who may have the power and inclination to resist them.

It is only the latest price we pay for that cowardly act of appeasement by the leaders in Washington, Republican and Democrat, in September 2008.

Turn on your TV, and you can see propaganda spots for Bank of America and Citi, paid by your taxes and the cheapening of your currency that allowed the Fed to flood them with cash. Read the gossip pages, and you can find out how the leading criminals are enjoying their latest round of bonuses. Paid by you. Watch the news, and you will see evidence of their lobby’s latest successes in Washington, and again the lobbyists are paid - millions - by you, to screw you. Banking regulation? That has to go through legislative bodies filled with the paid servants of the banks, and even if some minor restraint does come out of the process, it will take years.

Meanwhile, Moody’s can downgrade a country in less time than it takes for Madam Speaker to read the title of a bill. Soon as it is spoken, their decree has the force of a natural disaster.

California, the United States, Greece and the EU should not be living in terror of Moody's.

Moody's should be living in terror that the law enforcement is going to knock down their doors and seize their files - tomorrow morning could not be soon enough.

The loose ends that unravel the Wall Street criminal complexes are there, amongst the "auditors" who have shielded the Goldman Sachses and the Citis and the AIGs.

Here is my powerless cry for the day, and if there’s a spirit in the world after all, may it be magnified a trillion times and come true before this year is out:

Seize Moody's. Now.