Reply #26: $2 Trillion Handed out by Paulson and Bernanke, But Who Got It, Nobody Knows

[Octafish]

We're talking serious crime. And when we call the cops, they tell us not to worry they're on the case. Then we see them pulled in behind the Dunkin' Donuts, where the bad guy is peeling off a few bills from the roll and putting them in a bag for them to carry out.

$2 Trillion Handed out by Paulson and Bernanke, But Who Got It, Nobody Knows

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
Posted on November 17, 2008, Printed on November 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107340/

With his latest policy switch to buying stock in banks and other companies, Henry Paulson has more zigs and zags to his credit than a fox trying to escape a pack of hounds.

The fox and the hounds, of course, have a clear idea of what they want to do and how they want to do it, which is more than you can say of Paulson. Sums of incalculable size are being spent or pledged by Paulson and his playmate, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and nobody outside their organizations, or maybe inside them either, knows who got what, how much they got, and under what conditions they got it.

In the past couple of months Bernanke has loaned out $2 trillion to unnamed companies under eleven different programs and all but three of them were slapped together in the past fifteen months of financial crisis.

To repeat, we do not know who got this money or what collateral was put up in return for the loans or what conditions were attached to them.

The sums involved are almost three times as large as Paulson's $700 billion muddled bailout efforts that Congress voted for last month. Bernanke does have the legal authority to pass out these trillions without Congressional authorization and without explanation, but secrecy breeds suspicion and loss of confidence.

These officials preface every speech by talking about "transparency," their favorite word, at the same time they are handing off $2 trillion and they won't say to whom, and leading Bloomberg News to file suit under the Freedom of Information Act.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/107340/%242_trillion_handed_out_by_paulson_and_bernanke%2C_but_who_got_it%2C_nobody_knows/

There is something very wrong when We the People, in near-unanimity, say "No" to the "loans" for Wall Street and Congress goes ahead and gives Wall Street the money -- no strings or accounting attached.

Thank you for giving a damn about it, AntiFascist.