Here's a snapshot in words of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner when he was still president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from a recent portrait in the New York Times:
"He ate lunch with senior executives from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley at the Four Seasons restaurant or in their corporate dining rooms. He attended casual dinners at the homes of executives like Jamie Dimon, a member of the New York Fed board and the chief of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Geithner was particularly close to executives of Citigroup, the largest bank under his supervision. Robert E. Rubin, a senior Citi executive and a former Treasury secretary, was Mr. Geithner's mentor from his years in the Clinton administration, and the two kept in close touch in New York."
Small world, don't you think? This catches something of the lifestyle of Wall Street's rich and financially powerful as well as those who "regulate" them. It's no longer news that the revolving door from Wall Street to Washington and back now spins endlessly. Hence, the increasingly popular moniker "Government Sachs."
"Crony capitalism" was once a term applied to the powerful oligarchs of "emerging economies" or -- a term not heard so much these days -- banana republics. Now, however, as economist Simon Johnson has written, the U.S. is beginning to look startlingly more like one of those "emerging economies" in meltdown. And overseeing the response to the crisis are, of course, representatives of the same crony capitalists and oligarchs who helped create it.
Not surprisingly, the "solution" to the crash of '08 crafted by former Goldman Sachs chairman Henry Paulson, Jr. -- Rubin held the same job before going to Treasury in the Clinton years -- and former New York Fed chief Tim Geithner (who made Mark Patterson, a former Sachs lobbyist, his chief of staff and kept on Sachs alum Neel Kashkari to lead the bailout effort) is clearly meant to staunch the wounds of their world, not ours. TomDispatch regular Andy Kroll, who's read all the latest economic reports so you wouldn't have to, suggests below just what an instrument of Wall Street their rolling bailout program has really been. Tom
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold
How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System
By Andy Kroll
On October 3rd, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the U.S. government responded with the largest bailout in American history. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized the use of $700 billion to stabilize the nation's failing financial systems and restore the flow of credit in the economy.
The legislation's guidelines for crafting the rescue plan were clear: the TARP should protect home values and consumer savings, help citizens keep their homes, and create jobs. Above all, with the government poised to invest hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in various financial institutions, the legislation urged the bailout's architects to maximize returns to the American people.
That $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve. About $1.1 trillion of that is taxpayer money -- the TARP money and an additional $400 billion rescue of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The TARP now includes 12 separate programs, and recipients range from megabanks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to automakers Chrysler and General Motors.
Continued>>>
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175075BTW.... CNBC is reporting that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are getting paid 100% on their SECURED GM DEBT. Follow the bouncing money as it flows from the gov to Wall Street thru GM just like it did with AIG!
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
