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

[Octafish]

Now that George Walker Bush has emptied what’s left of the U.S. Treasury into Wall Street’s gargantuan beggar’s cup,
you need to know the name of the fellah who got us into this deregulation mess.

His name is George Herbert Walker Bush. Duhbya’s daddy.

Here he is at the old ball game (or wherever), giving the lensman (or somebody) a nice smile and a great big conspiratorial wink.



Poppy as Veep was charged with driving the deregulation bandwagon.

Back when trickle-down was new, Ronald Reagan appointed Poppy the Veep to a big job.
Bush was to head the federal government’s efforts to streamline government regulations,
including the deregulation of the financial “industry.”

BUSH GROUP'S PROPOSALS ON BANKING REGULATION

By EDWARD COWAN (NYT); Financial Desk
The New York Times
December 24, 1983, Saturday
Late City Final Edition, Section 1, Page 39, Column 5, 689 words

An Administration working group has agreed on a long list of changes meant to simplify Federal regulation of financial institutions, according to a statement from Vice President Bush's office. The group, which Mr. Bush heads, is striving to send recommendations for legislative proposals to President Reagan within weeks. The ...

SOURCE (sorry, no dinero for downloadin’ today):

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0C1EFD3E5C0C778EDDAB0994DB484D81

Unfortunately, this also led Uncle Sam to desupervise these same financial industries.
In addition to unleashing the age of greed, this desupervision served to benefit a certain class of fraudster –

a high class, connected fraudster.


Two New Words for P.O.’d Taxpayers

CONTROL FRAUD

Control Fraud

Lars Christian Smith
Conservation Finance

James Galbraith mentions in a comment the very useful concept of “control fraud” introduced by William K. Black, see e.g. When Fragile becomes Friable: Endemic Control Fraud as a Cause of Economic Stagnation and Collapse (pdf),

Individual “control frauds” cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime combined. They are financial super-predators. Control frauds are crimes led by the head of state or CEO that use the nation or company as a fraud vehicle. Waves of “control fraud” can cause economic collapses, damage and discredit key institutions vital to good political governance, and erode trust…

Economic theory about fraud is underdeveloped, core neo-classical theories imply that major frauds are trivial, economists are not taught about fraud and fraud mechanisms, and neo-classical economists minimize the incidence and importance of fraud for reasons of self-interest, class and ideology.

Neo-classical economics’ understanding of fraud is so weak that its policy prescriptions, if adopted wholly, produce strongly criminogenic environments that cause waves of control fraud. Neo-classical policies simultaneously make control fraud easier and more lucrative, dramatically reduce the risk of detection and prosecution by maximizing “systems capacity” problems, and encourage crime by making it easier for fraudsters to “neutralize” the social and psychological constraints against deceit and fraud. Thus the paradox: neo-classical economic triumphs produce tragedy…

William K. Black is also the author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

SOURCE: http://conservationfinance.wordpress.com/2007/03/06/control-fraud/

The Bush Commission’s work resulted in the “right” conditions.

DE-REGULATION MEANS DE-SUPERVISION

The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

By William K. Black

Preface

In 2003, the United States Department of Justice reported that property crimes had continued their trend and fallen to an all time low. In fact, property crimes have surged to an all-time high since Enron collapsed in late 2001. The reason for the contradiction is that the Justice Department does not count serious property crimes because it excludes white-collar crimes from its data keeping. A wave of frauds led by the men who control large corporations, what I term "control fraud," caused the massive losses from property crimes.

In the 1980s, a wave of control frauds ravaged the savings and loan (S&L) industry. I was a regulator during the heart of that crisis. As the book shows, I had an uncanny ability to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time and a talent for getting powerful politicians furious at me. After the crisis, I went back to school at the University of California at Irvine to learn to be a criminologist. I knew that the S&L crisis had grown out of systemic fraud. My dissertation studied California S&L control frauds.

This book arose from my concerns that we had failed to learn the lessons of the S&L debacle and that the failure meant that we walked blind into the ongoing wave of control frauds. The defrauders use companies as both sword and shield. They have shown themselves capable of fooling the most sophisticated market participants and academic experts. They are financial superpredators who use accounting fraud as a weapon and a shield against prosecution.

Several factors make control frauds uniquely dangerous. The person who controls a company (or country) can defeat all internal and external controls because he is ultimately in charge of those controls. Fraudulent CEOs do not simply defeat controls; they suborn them and turn them into allies. Top law firms, under the pretense of rendering zealous advocacy to the client, have helped fraudulent CEOs loot and destroy the client.

Top-tier audit firms are even more valuable allies (Black 1993e). Every S&L control fraud, and all of the major control frauds that have surfaced recently, were able to get clean opinions from them. Control frauds, using accounting fraud as their primary weapon and shield, typically report sensational profits, followed by catastrophic failure. These fictitious profits provide the means for sophisticated, fraudulent CEOs to use common corporate mechanisms such as stock bonuses to convert firm assets to their personal benefit. In short, they camouflage themselves as legitimate leaders and take advantage of the presumption of regularity (and psychic rewards) that CEOs receive.

Fraudulent CEOs can transform the firm and the regulatory environment to aid control fraud. They can use the full resources of the firm to bring about these changes. Control frauds frequently make (directly and indirectly) large political contributions. They may lobby in favor of deregulation or tort reform, or seek to remove the chief regulator. They can place the firm in the lines of businesses that offer the best opportunities for accounting fraud. This generally means investing in assets that have no readily ascertainable market value and arranging reciprocal "sales" of goods, which can transform real losses into fictional profits (Black 1993b). It can also mean, however, targeting poorly regulated industries. They can make the firm grow rapidly and become a Ponzi scheme.

The result is a dangerous package that appears healthy and legitimate but is not and that has extraordinary resources available for use by a fraudulent CEO. Control frauds have shown the ability to fool the most sophisticated market participants. They can be massively insolvent and still be touted by experts as among the very best firms in the world. The conventional economic wisdom about the S&L debacle assumed that "high flier" S&Ls existed solely because of deposit insurance. Scholars asserted that private market discipline would prevent any excessive risk taking in industries that had no government guarantee. This view was incorrect: S&L control frauds consistently showed the ability to deceive uninsured private creditors and shareholders. Elliot Levitas, one of the commissioners appointed to investigate the causes of the debacle as part of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement (NCFIRRE), emphasized this point in 1993, but no economist took him seriously. The current wave of control frauds has proved his point conclusively.

The scariest aspect of control frauds, however, is that they can occur in waves, causing systemic damage. The S&L debacle was contained before it damaged our overall economy, but this book explains how near a thing that was. Waves of control fraud have occurred in many nations, often with devastating consequences. Russia's privatization campaign was ruined by such a wave.

CONTINUED…

http://books.google.com/books?id=SI3F8wEuT24C&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=reagan+administration+banking+deregulation&source=web&ots=UjIZ1kdNve&sig=VJz7Y8ZC7VUhzLTRxTWEhyGGOlM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA37,M1

… WHICH MEANS DE-FRAUDING THE MOPES

No wonder John McCain’s so chummy with Joe Lieberman.

Need a hint?
Arthur Andersen?
ENRON?

Dishonesty, Greed and Hypocrisy in Corporate America.



Come to think of it, it explains why McCain’s friends with Phil Gramm, the ultraconservative deregulator from Texas.

ENRON and the Gramms

THE FINE PRINT.

Something very important we don’t want to miss… or forget.

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Smirk." - BFEE

"We Bush Family 'elite' occultists are - smirk - a heckuva cabal. Our sincere (smirk) condolences to you pathetic American proles. Smirk."

- BFEE

[Octafish]

5. Amid turmoil, McCain turns to regulation

What Santayana said, wot?

Amid turmoil, McCain turns to regulation

Market intervention critic rapidly recasts stance

By Michael Kranish and Farah Stockman
The Boston Globe
September 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - Responding to the turmoil on Wall Street, John McCain said flatly yesterday: "We need strong and effective regulation."

But throughout his two-decade Senate career, McCain has cast himself as an outspoken critic of government intervention in the markets, saying that he is "fundamentally a deregulator."

The dizzying series of bankruptcies, buyouts, and bailouts on Wall Street has prompted McCain to recast his outlook at a crucial moment in the presidential campaign. After saying Tuesday that he opposed any more government bailouts, he said yesterday that the government was "forced" to loan $85 billion to rescue insurance giant AIG because so many of its customers were affected. After saying Monday that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong," he seemed to backtrack by saying he was talking about the spirit of workers, not the rising rate of unemployment or the plunging stock market.

McCain's economic worldview could suddenly be a political liability. Since he has said he supports government intervention only in catastrophic times, he is open to criticism from liberals who see deregulation as the root of the problem and conservatives who see the taxpayer bailouts as rewarding reckless decisions. Fifty-three percent of voters surveyed said they were confident in McCain's ability to make the right decisions about the economy, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released yesterday, while 60 percent are confident in Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama. The poll showed stark pessimism about the economy - nearly 80 percent rated conditions as negative and 6 in 10 said they are getting worse.

"After all the years of tearing down the regulations that govern financial institutions, it rings hollow to claim that he will build them back up," said Elizabeth Warren, professor of bankruptcy law at Harvard Law School. "This economy is the direct consequence of the deregulation that John McCain fought for day after day, year after year, since the mid-1980s."

In recent days, the financial problems have become so enormous that McCain has had to rapidly adjust his stance, particularly on regulation of the financial sector. McCain is calling for a commission to study remedies for the meltdown, which he blamed partly on lax regulation.

"These actions stem from failed regulation, reckless management, and a casino culture on Wall Street that has crippled one of the most important companies in America," McCain said in a statement yesterday. He said he wanted to protect those "who hold insurance policies, retirement plans and other accounts with AIG," but "not bail out the management and speculators who created this mess."

The crisis has also revived memories of a subject the McCain campaign hoped would be only a distant memory: McCain's involvement in the "Keating Five" scandal in the late 1980s. In the aftermath of that Senate ethics investigation - in which McCain was faulted for poor judgment by advocating for a major campaign contributor with savings and loan regulators - McCain said he understood the need for government oversight of financial institutions.

But William K. Black, who was one of the regulators who accused McCain of interfering, said yesterday that he does not believe McCain ever shed his anti-regulatory views. "He still has ideological blinders on," said Black, who later co-wrote a government report on the lessons learned from the scandal.

"He took no meaningful leadership role to try to deal with the recurring problems, and that is why the current crisis not only recurred but has intensified to the point where they have severely damaged the global economy," said Black, now an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's law school.

CONTINUED...

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/18/amid_turmoil_mccain_turns_to_regulation?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Top+political+stories

Heh heh heh.



Small world. And very, very bad.

[ancient_nomad]

2. KnR!

Another great post, Octafish! Bookmarking to read this evening. You are a treasure, and I look for your posts. Thanks so much!

:loveya:

[Octafish]

6. 50 Mule Team

United Slaves of America

An ex-boss once said that the workers who did the lifting were “mules.”
It wasn’t complimentary, he just was stating management’s position that the help was there to carry the load and do the work.
The metaphor is apt for America today.

Bush sees the rich skipping out on taxes

By Steve Benen
CrooksandLiars.com
Sunday Feb 10, 2008 8:22am

There were quite a few interesting gems in the president's Fox News interview over the weekend, but this one stood out for me:

WALLACE: How does overcome all of that and...

BUSH: Because there's two big issues. One is, who's going to keep your taxes low? Most Americans feel overtaxed and I promise you the Democrat party is going to field a candidate who says I'm going to raise your tax.

If they're going to say, oh, we're only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.

We've had -- we've been through this drill before. We're only going to tax the rich and all you have to do is look at the history of that kind of language and see who gets stuck with the bill.

Does this make any sense at all? Wealthy people hire accountants, so the government should leave their tax rates alone?

As Isaac Chotiner put it, "The Democrats want to raise rates on the wealthiest Americans, but Bush is saying that in fact this will screw the middle class because the rich have ways to avoid paying taxes. The obvious question is, then, why has Bush spent so much time giving tax cuts to the rich?!?!"

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/02/11/bush-sees-the-rich-skipping-out-on-taxes

PS: Thank you for the kind words, ancient_nomad. Same goes for you, my Friend!

[Tutonic]

3. Poppy will be hell before Junior--waiting on the rest of that hellacious

klan.

[Octafish]

9. The 1981 Tax Act - Dropping Napalm on a Forest Fire

A bit more from Mr. Black's book that helps explain our present circumstances:

The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

William K. Black

EXCERPT...

THE 1981 TAX ACT: DROPPING NAPALM ON A FOREST FIRE

In addition to cutting the marginal rate of taxation, the 1981 Tax Act created abusive tax shelters and encouraged investments in real estate that were driven by tax, rather than normal economic, considerations. The inevitable result was a bubble in real estate values, particularly in commercial real estate. The bubble helped S&L control frauds claim record profits and increased the ultimate losses to the taxpayers once the bubble burst. A recurrent myth is that the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which removed most of the abusive provisions of the 1981 act, caused real estate recessions and greater losses to the FSLIC. As the investigating commission explained in its report on the debacle:

Many observers blamed the 1986 Tax Act for the woes that befell the S&L industry, but it was the 1981 Act that created an unsustainable boom, and encouraged “over-building.” The 1986 law hastened the collapse in the Southwest, much of whose expansion had been based on expectations of continued inflation of property values. But had the 1986 act not been passed, over-building would have been even greater, and the eventual collapse in real-estate values deeper. (NCFIRRE 1993a, 55)


SCAMS THAT OPPORTUNISTIC CONTROL FRAUDS USED TO ACQUIRE S&LS FOR FREE (OR LESS!)

To an opportunistic control fraud, obtaining control more cheaply is the bronze standard, doing so for free wins a silver medal, and getting paid to take control takes the gold. Opportunistic control frauds lived up tot he name I gave them: they were champions at getting something for nothing. I’ll explain the most common scams. (The scams were not necessarily mutually exclusive; some opportunists combined them.) The most common fraud mechanism was to have Hermann K. Beebe fund the purchase of an S&L. Beebe was a control fraud, a convicted felon running a Louisiana insurance company. He was an associated of the New Orleans mob. Beebe helped scores of control frauds acquire S&Ls and banks in the Southwest (Mayer 1990, 226). Beebe would loan the money to buy the S&L. The buyer would, in turn, cause his S&L to make far larger loans to Beebe’s straws. The straws, of course, would not repay the loans. Beebe won, the S&L owner won, and the taxpayers lost.

Similarly, Michael Milken, the “junk bond king” of Drexel Burnham Lambert, financed Charles Keating’s purchase of Lincoln Savings and David Paul’s purchase of CenTrust Savings (Black 1993c). Keating did not have to spend a penny of his own money to buy the S&L.

SOURCE:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SI3F8wEuT24C&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=reagan+administration+banking+deregulation&source=web&ots=UjIZ1kdNve&sig=VJz7Y8ZC7VUhzLTRxTWEhyGGOlM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA37,M1

Yeah. Read my lips, Poppy: It's going to be crowded as heck down there,
with all the warmongers and traitors and mass murderers and thieves and such.

[Snazzy]

22. Milken & Keating, eh?

Interesting.

Starting to see the overall BFEE themes pretty clearly, thanks. Interesting too that not only do we get 41 involved in everything as usual, but hell of a lot of links to Mcsame. He's been a wholly owned BFEE subsidiary longer than I realized.

[xxqqqzme]

27. let us not overlook neal

b*sh had a failed S&L that he was able to unload w/ no penalty to him.

[bluesmail]

4. If it's about swindling us taxpayers and who knows how

many others there are, out of massive amounts of money, well, of course. It's Poppy. Wink Wink

[Octafish]

10. The Bush Family: A Continuing Criminal Enterprise?

It's like a family tradition...

The Bush Family: A Continuing Criminal Enterprise?

Gary W. Potter, PhD.
Professor, Criminal Justice
Eastern Kentucky University

The S&Ls, the Mob and the Bushs

During the 1980's hundred of Savings and Loan Banks failed. Those bank failures cost U.S. taxpayers over $500 billion to cover federally insured losses, and much more to investigate the bank failures (Pizzo, Fricker, and Muolo, 1989; Brewton, 1992; Johnston, 1990). More than 75% of the Savings and Loan insolvencies where directly linked to serious and often criminal misconduct by senior financial insiders (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 305). In fact, less than 10 percent of bank failures are related to economic conditions, the rest are caused by mismanagement or criminal conduct (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 305).

A good example of the Savings and Loan failures can be found in the activities of Mario Renda, a Savings and Loan insider who often worked in close collaboration with organized crime (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 123-126;302). Renda served as a middle man in arranging about $5 billion a year in deposits into 130 Savings and Loans, all of which failed (Kwitny, 1992: 27). Many of these deposits were made contingent on an agreement that the Savings and Loan involved would lend money to borrowers recommended by Renda, many of whom were organized crime figures or people entirely unknown to the banking institution involved (Kwitny, 1992: 27).

SNIP...

Prescott Bush: The Yakuza’s Frontman

Finally, and perhaps most seriously, the Bush family pioneered the practice which has now become commonplace of collaboration between corporate and organized criminals. Prescott Bush, uncle of the current President and brother of the former President, played a key role in helping the Japanese Yakuza extend their financial and real estate holdings to the United States. In 1989, Prescott Bush made arrangements for a front company for Japanese organized crime groups to buy into two U.S. corporations and to make a sizeable real investment in the U.S. (Helm, 1991a: 1; Isikoff, 1992: A1). West Tsusho, a Japanese corporation, was identified by Japanese police officials as a front company for one of that country’s largest organized crime syndicates. Prescott Bush was paid a fee of $500,000 for his help in negotiating West Tsusho’s purchase of controlling interest in Assets Management, a U.S. corporation (Helm, 1991a: 1; Isikoff, 1992: A1). Bush also assisted the Japanese mob in investing in Quantam Access, a U.S. software company, which was ultimately taken over by the Japanese (Helm, 1991b: 10; Isikoff, 1992: A1). Both companies ultimately went into bankruptcy (Isikoff, 1992: A1; Moses, 1992).

George Bush Sr.: Shutting Down the Organize Crime Strike Forces

Despite assessments from senior law enforcement officers and experts on organized crime that efforts to control organized crime would be crippled, in December 1989, the administration of George Bush, Sr. abolished all 14 regional organized crime strike forces (McAlister, 1989: A 21; Struck out, 1990). The organized crime strike had been created as independent entities so they would not be subject to political influences or bureaucratic wrangling within federal law enforcement. In the two decades of their operation the strike forces had secured convictions of major organized crime figures in several U.S. cities (Struck out, 1990). It is at the very least curious to note that the federal strike force in Miami had been responsible for indicting Miguel Recarey, the man for whom Jeb Bush had intervened with regulators. Organized crime strike forces had similarly indicted Mario Renda, the organized crime liaison to the S& L’s, as well as several other key figures in the Savings and Loan Fiasco (Pizzo, Fricker, and Mulolo, 1989: 112, 120-123, 303, 337).

CONTINUED...

http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm

...and once they're in, they can never get out.

[seemslikeadream]

7. The sunny side of the street

[Octafish]

15. Berezovsky and Bush's brother in the crowd at the Emirates

Buy low.

Berezovsky and Bush's brother in the crowd at the Emirates

Paul Kelso
The Guardian, Tuesday September 5 2006

The exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has made his first public appearance since being linked with the takeover of West Ham. Berezovsky was at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday in the company of Neil Bush the brother of the US president, George Bush.

Berezovsky has invested in an online educational company founded by the president's younger brother and invited Bush to join him in his box at Arsenal to watch the Brazil-Argentina friendly. Also present were Alberto Dualib and Nesi Curi, president and vice-president of Corinthians, the Brazilian club that sold the Argentinian internationals Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano to West Ham United in the surprise deal of transfer deadline day.

A spokesman for Berezovsky yesterday denied he is an investor in a takeover for West Ham fronted by the Iranian businessman Kia Joorabchian. Joorabchian spent yesterday in talks with his lawyers about the takeover and discussing the possibility of legal action over media coverage of the deal. He insists his backers are from the Middle East and the United Kingdom, with a British multimillionaire thought to be involved. West Ham insiders, meanwhile, believe that after the takeover speculation of the last five days a deal to sell the club is no more than 50-50 likely to happen.

SOURCE:

Where is Meyer Lansky when you need him?



Sell high.

[Snazzy]

23. AIG ended up owning the Dubai ports

(With Neil Bush making a cameo as usual, and Carlyle getting a kickback.)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is a major investor in The Carlyle Group, the private equity investment firm where President Bush’s father once served as senior adviser and is a who’s who of former high-level government officials. Just last year, Dubai International Capital, a government-backed buyout firm, invested in an $8 billion Carlyle fund.

But there’s much more:

Another family connection, the president’s brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his educational software company from the UAE investors. A call to his company was not returned.

Snow: Who knew?

Then there is the cabinet connection. Treasury Secretary John Snow was chairman of railroad company CSX/. After he left the company for the White House, CSX sold its international port operations to Dubai Ports World for more than a billion dollars.

In Connecticut today, Snow told reporters he had no knowledge of that CSX sale. “I learned of this transaction probably the same way members of the Senate did, by reading about it in the newspapers.”

http://correntewire.com/bush_family_dubai_ports_world_and_the_carlyle_group_more_incest_than_a_village_in_appalachia


Dubai firm sells US ports to AIG

The six major US ports involved include New York and New Jersey
Dubai Ports World (DPW) has agreed to sell its US port operations to AIG Global Investment after American anger at the United Arab Emirates ownership.
When DPW took control of the six ports, as part of its purchase of P&O's ports in March, US politicians expressed fear at them being in Middle Eastern hands.

Chief executive Mohammad Sharaf said a cash deal had now been agreed "covering 100% of the US assets".

....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6169523.stm

Natch, the more you dig the more this will turn out to have somehow stayed in the family after all. Certainly AIG's early history shares some similarities with Prescott Bush and co. Not to mention the founding of the CIA:

The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men
By Mark Fritz
September 22, 2000 in print edition A-1

They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration.

They weren’t just secret agents. They were secret insurance agents. These undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a global industry that both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.

...

American insurance companies had been competing furiously for overseas business even after the United States entered the war, and the OSS files suggest that details about U.S. factories and cities were falling into enemy hands because of the interlocking international relationships among insurance companies.

Germany had 45% of the worldwide wholesale insurance industry before the war began and managed to actually expand its business as it conquered continental Europe. As wholesalers, or “reinsurers,” these companies covered other insurers against a catastrophic loss that could wipe out a single company. In the process, the wholesaler learned everything about the lives and property they were reinsuring.

Unit’s Efforts Are More Than Altruistic

The motives of the OSS unit’s founders were both pragmatic and patriotic.

“This story is incredible because the unit begins as part of the desire of American interests to contribute to the war effort and exploit it for future economic gain,” said historian Timothy Naftali, a consultant to the Nazi War Criminals Interagency Working Group that was created by Congress last year.

The men behind the insurance unit were OSS head William “Wild Bill” Donovan and California-born insurance magnate Cornelius V. Starr.

Starr had started out selling insurance to Chinese in Shanghai in 1919 and, over the next 50 years, would build what is now American International Group, one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. He was forced to move his operation to New York in 1939, when Japan invaded China.

...

A commission headed by former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger is investigating whether five mostly German-owned insurance companies operating today ever paid off all the life insurance policies they sold to Jews, a target market as the Nazis were ascendant.

The insurance unit’s reports gave at least one chilling glimpse of how Jewish policies were processed: “You might be interested in the enclosed Dutch Decree of June 11, 1943 ordering the reporting and liquidating of all insurance policies on behalf of the Jews… .”

...

Starr sent insurance agents into Asia and Europe even before the bombs stopped falling and built what eventually became AIG, which today has its world headquarters in the same downtown New York building where the tiny OSS unit toiled in the deepest secrecy.

Starr died in 1968, but his empire endures. AIG is the biggest foreign insurance company in Japan. More than a third of its $40 billion in revenue last year came from the Far East theater that Starr helped carpet bomb and liberate.

....

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/22/news/mn-25118

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Just noting two prominent Dems who headed Goldman: NJ Gov. Corzine, Bob Rubin...

Clinton's Treasury Secretary and an economic adviser to Obama. Goldman participated in the financial practices that have brought us to the place we are now, but there are as many powerful Dems in the hierarchy of that firm as powerful Repubs.

Not arguing with the point of your post -- just noting an aside.

[Octafish]

18. Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud -- Bail Out the Homeowners!

Absolutely, there are friends from both sides of the aisle who walk the crooked line together. In BCCI, it was the DEM éminence grise Clark Clifford who opened the door into the high-end Big Money of Washington and NYC. Money is money. Those who want power need it. For such, money is their lifeblood.

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs is one of Wall Street’s most prestigious investment banks. Like others in the securities industry, it advises and invests in nearly every industry affected by federal legislation. The firm closely monitors issues including economic policy, trade and nearly all legislation that governs the financial sector. It has been a major proponent of privatizing Social Security as well as legislation that would essentially deregulate the investment banking/securities industry. In August 2002, following months of corporate scandals, congressional investigators launched a probe into whether stock analysts at Goldman Sachs issued biased investment advice in order to protect corporate clients. The firm tends to give most of its money to Democrats. Goldman Sachs' former chief executive, Jon Corzine, served in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from New Jersey. He's now the state's governor.

SOURCE: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000085

Goldman Sachs is filled with good people, too. And they are big-time supporters of the Democratic Party (and the GOP, too).

The Good Thing is, our party still has a chance to do the right thing as. The mjority of Democrats, I believe, are still good guys and gals -- no matter the threats to their health and safety; no-warrant spying; and offers that can't be refused.

The other side appears beyond redemption.

Bail Out the Homeowners!

Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
October 3 - 5, 2008

Is the Paulson bailout itself as big a fraud as the leveraged subprime mortgages?

Yesterday, here on CounterPunch, I discussed the bailout as proposed and noted that the proposal cannot succeed if it impairs the US Treasury’s credit standing and/or the combination of mark-to-market and short-selling permits short-sellers to prosper by driving more financial institutions into bankruptcy.

A reader’s comment and an article by Yale professors Jonathan Kopell and William Goetzmann raise precisely this question of the fraudulence of the Paulson package.

As one reader put it,“We have debt at three different levels: personal household debt, financial sector debt and public debt. The first has swamped the second and now the second is being made to swamp the third. The attitude of our leaders is to do nothing about the first level of debt and to pretend that the third level of debt doesn't matter at all.”

The argument for the bailout is that the banks will be free of the troubled instruments and can resume lending and that the US Treasury will recover most of the bailout costs, because only a small percentage of the underlying mortgages are bad. Let’s examine this argument.

In actual fact, the Paulson bailout does not address the core problem. It only addresses the problem for the financial institutions that hold the troubled assets. Under the bailout plan, the troubled assets move from the banks’ books to the Treasury’s. But the underlying problem--the continuing diminishment of mortgage and home values--remains and continues to worsen.

The origin of the crisis is at the homeowner level. Homeowners are defaulting on mortgages. Moving the financial instruments onto the Treasury’s books does not stop the rising default rate.

The bailout is focused on the wrong end of the problem. The bailout should be focused on the origin of the problem, the defaulting homeowners. The bailout should indemnify defaulting homeowners and pay off the delinquent mortgages. As Koppell and Goetzmann point out, the financial instruments are troubled because of mortgage defaults. Stopping the problem at its origin would restore the value of the mortgage-based derivatives and put an end to the crisis.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10032008.html

If you don't mind the soundtrack...

Republicans On the Take

PS: Thank you for knowing what's what and caring, DeepModem Mom.

[DeepModem Mom]

24. And thanks for your dedication and excellent work, Octafish! nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Thanks Octafish as normal

you tie it together..... these fuckers are criminals.

[Octafish]

29. The CIA: Banking on Intelligence

Covert Action Quarterly and its predecessor Covert Action Information Bulletin were two top windows into the workings of the BFEE and Capitalism's Invisible Army.

The CIA: Banking on Intelligence

Anthony L. Kimery
Covert Action Information No. 46

The CIA has collected, and the intelligence community has collected, economic intelligence of one kind or another since its inception. — Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey

The CIA has never been above breaking the law as it battles communists, nationalists, terrorists, or the latest “national security threat”: foreign-directed economic and financial subterfuge. This growing economic focus comes at the bidding of many voices in the CIA, Pentagon, and corporate community who believe the U.S.’s primary intelligence mission should be to help industry compete in the global marketplace. There has been little public discussion, however, over just when corporate competition becomes a sufficient threat to the national security to unleash the corruptible talents of the intelligence community into the world of international finance.


“New” Intelligence Requirements: Old Practices

That line between “national security” and private financial interests has long been mutable and subject to the day-to-day needs of the CIA. For decades, the U.S. has used currency manipulations, embargoes, and other forms of economic pressure to undermine its foes. When the 1945 Bretton Woods agreement established the U.S. dollar as the international currency of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the U.S. secured enormous international financial leverage. It can direct intense fiscal pressure against foreign financial institutions, and even an entire national economy, by activating the global power of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve (along with the international financial institutions it controls). Witness the long-standing embargo against Cuba, the economic sabotage of Nicaragua in the 1980s, the illegal withholding of Panama’s canal revenues between 1987 and 1990, and the current international sanctions against Iraq. Economic motives have always driven U.S. covert operations. And bending banking regulations to the benefit of U.S. and foreign elites has been standard practice. Thus, it should be no surprise that, despite questionable legality, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA already engage in extensive economic intelligence activities wherever U.S. national security interests are perceived to be at risk.

The practice of using existing U.S. intelligence agencies to gather economic and financial data through traditional spy methods was given a boost by the Reagan administration. Incoming CIA Director William Casey’s national security credentials were matched by his business background. Casey had been chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Undersecretary of State for economic affairs, and Import-Export Bank President. He ordered the Agency’s once modest National Collection Division (NCD) to recruit major corporate executives abroad to gather proprietary information on foreign businesses and the trade and economic policies of foreign governments. This move made the NCD the largest information gathering program within the Agency’s operations directorate. By 1984, more than 150 corporations were providing cover for CIA people overseas.

Also on Casey’s order, from 1982 through 1987, career CIA man Douglas P. Mulholland served at the Treasury Department as the chief liaison to the Agency. The person in this position typically ensures that, should some low-level regulator stumble across banking law violations, CIA operations involving banks and other federally regulated financial institutions are not compromised. No operations, it seems, were compromised on Mulholland’s watch. He retired from the CIA in 1987 to become a researcher for George Bush’s presidential campaign, and later headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.


Treasury Joins the Inner Circle

While the Reagan and Bush administrations were able to maintain the CIA’s budget in the name of anticommunism, the post-Cold War CIA has had to be more diverse. It has switched its emphasis to counterterrorism and economic intelligence.

Bill Clinton wasted no time in elevating the “new” economic agenda to the highest level. For the first time, a treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, became a member of the CIA’s daily White House briefing. Previously, the briefing was reserved only for the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the secretaries of state and defense. This move formalized a trend put in motion by Reagan and Bush, who had already brought the Department of the Treasury’s intelligence unit and the CIA closer together.

Reagan had created a new agency at Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), with liaisons to the NSA, CIA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). FinCEN compiles and analyzes the computerized financial disclosure data that banks are required to report to regulators under the Bank Secrecy Act and related money laundering laws. Its capabilities are staggering. For instance, when federal agents wanted to analyze patterns of cash deposits in New York City as part of a drug investigation, FinCEN’s computers quickly isolated a single cash-rich neighborhood in Manhattan. Its current director, Brian M. Bruh, is a former deputy assistant commissioner of criminal investigations at the IRS and served as chief investigator for the Tower Commission, President Reagan’s official Iran-Contra probe. Under Bruh’s leadership, FinCEN is expanding its capabilities. Los Alamos National Laboratory, on contract to FinCEN, is developing “artificial intelligence” capable of isolating specific financial activity within the millions of filings it has on computer. Though technically a law enforcement tool, this new software could easily be used to spy on virtually anybody’s personal or business financial transfers.

CONTINUED...

http://covertaction.org/content/view/142/75/

Thanks for giving a damn, my Friend! These lying, thieving, gangster, mass-murdering, warmongering traitors are running scared -- not of us, but of the Truth.

[Ichingcarpenter]

30. If the Obama administration and the Congress don't send these crooks to jail

Then you are gonna see a bunch of progressives pissed off.

[G_j]

12. wink!

just trust me.....


thanks again!

[Octafish]

38. Fed loans to AIG make Paulson's previous employer -- Goldman Sachs -- rich

Not to beat on a horse beaten down by a market decision, but...

Fed loans to AIG make Paulson's previous employer rich

Bloomberg / New York September 30, 2008, 0:44 IST

As much as $37 billion from federal bailout loans to American International Group Inc has gone to investment banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, the firm Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson used to run.

Without the government money, Goldman, Merrill Lynch & Co, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank AG and other firms could have become some of the biggest creditors in a bankruptcy filing by AIG, the world’s largest insurer, because of its billions in losses on sub-prime bonds and corporate debt.

“It was the biggest crisis ever — if you’re an investment bank,” said Joshua Rosner, a managing director at investment research firm Graham Fisher & Co in New York. “We didn’t just save AIG. We saved the counterparties, the banks. It’s true that it would have been a disaster, but it would have been a disaster for them.”

The firms received cash as AIG borrowed from a Federal Reserve credit line endorsed by Paulson, Goldman’s former chief executive. The insurer had borrowed $44.6 billion from the credit line as of September 25, the Federal Reserve reported that day.

Paulson’s successor at Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein, was the only chief executive at a meeting September 15 at the New York Federal Reserve Bank at which the troubles at AIG were discussed, although representatives of other firms were present, a Fed spokesman said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=335924

Thank you, my Friend! Really appreciate that you know what's what and who's who.

[OnyxCollie]

13. Kicked, recommended, and bookmarked.

Thanks, Octafish.

[Octafish]

39. Goldman Sachs Socialism

You are most welcome, blackops. Thank you for giving a damn.

Not to change the subject, but it's weird how there's never money to help We the People but there's always money to help the Well-to-Do.

Goldman Sachs Socialism

by William Greider
Published on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 by The Nation

Wall Street put a gun to the head of the politicians and said, Give us the money--right now--or take the blame for whatever follows. The audacity of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bailout proposal is reflected in what it refuses to say: no explanations of how the bailout will work, no demands on the bankers in exchange for the public's money. The Treasury's opaque, three-page summary of plan includes this chilling statement:

"Section 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." In other words, no lawsuits allowed by aggrieved investors or American taxpayers. No complaints later from ignorant pols who didn't know what they voted for. Take it or leave it, suckers.

Both political parties may submit to this extortion because they don't have a clue what else to do and bending over for Wall Street instruction, their usual posture, seems less risky than taking responsibility. Paulson and Bernanke evoked intimidating pressure for two reasons. The previous efforts to restore investor confidence had all failed as their slapdash interventions worsened the global panic. Besides, the Federal Reserve was running out of money. Nearly three-fifths of the Fed's $800 billion portfolio is now loaded down with junk--the mortgage securities and other rotten assets it took off Wall Street balance sheets. The imperious central bank is fast approaching its own historic disgrace--potentially as discredited as it was after the 1929 crash.

Despite its size, the gargantuan bailout is still designed for the narrow purpose of relieving the major banks and investment houses of their grief, then hoping this restores regular order to economic life. There are lots of reasons to think it may fail. The big boys are acting, as usual, in self-interested ways since the government allows them to do so. Washington's money might pull firms back from the brink--at least the leaders of the Wall Street Club--but that does not guarantee the banks will resume normal lending, much less capital investing. The financial guys may well hunker down, scavenge the wreckage for cheap profits and wait for the real economy to get well. Likewise, global investors--China, Japan and other major creditors--have been burned and may step back from pumping more capital in the wobbly house of US finance.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/24-4

You know what we are up against. And I very much appreciate being on your side.

[chill_wind]

14. "Small world...."

getting smaller, very concentrated, and very, very greedy.





K & R

[Octafish]

40. Goldman Sachs CEO gets $100 million compensation

It'd be nice if grown-ups acted like kids once in a while.

Press release

Goldman Sachs CEO gets $100 (million) compensation

10 March 2008

Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Goldman Sachs, has been awarded around $100 million in pay and stock during the 2007 fiscal year, it has emerged.

The company announced that Mr Blankfein was awarded $53.97 million in cash compensation during the year, while he also received $45.76 million through the vesting of stock, Reuters reports.

It notes that this figure reflects the methodology used by a number of executive pay consultants and is not identical to the company's calculation of Mr Blankfein's "approved 2007 compensation".

This compensation includes his $67.9 million year end bonus and totals $68.5 million.

"According to the same methodology, compensation for other top Goldman executives included a respective $53.04 million and $52.91 million for co-chief operating officers Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried," the company said."

It added that chief financial officer David Viniar received $42.58 million, while chief administrative officer Edward Forst was paid $39.85 million.

Last month, Goldman Sachs announced the appointment of J Michael Evans and Michael S Sherwood as vice chairmen of the company with immediate effect.

SOURCE:

http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2008/Mar/10/Goldman_Sachs_CEO_gets_$100_compensation.html

You know. Then, they'd share.

PS: That painting is as true as true can be. Wow. Thanks for sharing and knowing what it's all about, chill_wind!

[snot]

16. k&r'd

[Octafish]

41. Should Henry 'The Fox' Paulson Guard the Henhouse?

Thanks for giving a damn, snot!

Here's a bit of coverage ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutwork seems to have missed.

Should Henry 'The Fox' Paulson Guard the Henhouse?

by Medea Benjamin
Published on Thursday, October 9, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

EXCERPT...

"This bailout bill does not deal with the absurdity of the fox guarding the henhouse," Senator Bernie Sanders decried on the Senate floor. But during the post-bailout hearings held by the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Dennis Kucinich was the lone voice raising questions about Paulson's performance and his obvious conflict of interest.

Kucinich asked the witnesses from AIG and Lehman Brothers why one company -- AIG -- was bailed out by the Treasury Secretary while Lehman Brothers was allowed to go under. AIG owed Goldman Sachs $20 billion, so their bailout meant that Paulson's buddies at Goldman Sachs would get repaid in full. Goldman Sachs also gained a competitive advantage from the bankruptcy of its rival Lehman Brothers. One would think that this maneuver alone, which happened BEFORE the $700 billion taxpayer bailout, would have immediately raised hackles in Congress and disqualified Paulson as economic czar.

To see the absurdity of Paulson in charge of the crisis, Congress need only have looked at Paulson's past. On the very day that Congress passed the bailout, The New York Times published a shocking story about how the SEC was lobbied in 2004 by the nation's five largest investment banks to change a regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption unshackled billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments, and led to the unraveling of the financial sector. Among the five banks leading the charge to change the rule was Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry Paulson. Translation: Paulson was one of the architects of the crisis!

Paulson also benefited personally from the casino economy he helped engineer. After creating billions of dollars in bizarre financial products that are now nearly worthless, he left Goldman Sachs with a personal fortune of over $700 million.

"It is remarkable that Congress would be willing to give Secretary Paulson such enormous power in running this bailout given his advocacy of rule changes that played such an important role in this financial disaster, and the extent to which he personally profited from these changes," said Dean Baker, an economist who was one of the first in the country to sound the alarm that the housing bubble was about to burst. "This would be like giving the bank robber who cleaned out the vaults the opportunity to set the bank's finances in order -- and letting him keep the loot."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/09-6

Oh well. It's only money. Our money.

PS: Your avatar really sums up the age.

[Brush Fire]

17. It's basically a criminal junta

This is a lot of information, octafish.

[Octafish]

43. The Bush Family Evil Empire

BFEE is just a handle on The War Party. Not even Ian Fleming dreamed that one day a criminal cabal would hijack the power and purse of the U.S. government and turn it toward evil -- from warmongering and drug dealing to money laundering and unrestrained capitalism. But, the case can be made.

For me, connecting dots has been a sort of hobby. My hope is to help spread the word about these, fraudster-gangster-mass murdering-NAZI traitors.

Know your Bush Family Evil Empire

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

Know your BFEE: The Corrupt Bastards Club… with Lipstick

Know your BFEE: Olympic Games Show Who’s Best Friends Forever with Authoritarians and Dictators

Know your BFEE: Forget Rev. Wright! It’s Bush and His Cronies Who Owe an Apology for Rev. Moon!

Know your BFEE: 1984 Death of Outstanding Congressional Staffer Buried Poppy-Moon Relationship

Know your BFEE: GW Bush Covers Up His Lying America Into War

Know your BFEE: Bush and His Crooks with Badges Sent an Innocent Man to Jail

Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit

Know your BFEE: War and Oil are just two longtime Main Lines of Business

Know your BFEE: Bush has Killed a Million Innocent People for Their Oil.

Know your BFEE: Scions of the Military Industrial Complex

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ford Covered Up CIA Murder of American Scientist

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit.

Know your BFEE: America’s Ruling Gangster Class

Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and "Conspiracy Theorists" at Ford Funeral

Know your BFEE: Robert Gates did more than keep the doors open at BCCI

Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

Sink the BFEE: Foley gives us Congress. Condi sends 'em to prison.

Beat the BFEE: Poppy’s CIA warned about terror plots and did not stop them

Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

Know your BFEE: Neil Bush hangs out with Russian Mafiya Godfather

Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they / Bushes.

Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

Know your BFEE: Lies Are the Currency of Their Realm

Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

Know your BFEE: The Stench of Moussaoui Permeates the Octopus

Know your BFEE: Moussaoui Must Die for Bush and 'His' Government

Know your BFEE: Alito is just another word for Mussolini

Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI

Know your BFEE: The China-Bush Axis

Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

Know your BFEE: Libby Is the First Big BFEE Turd to Go Down

Know your BFEE: WHIG (White House Iraq Group) made phony case for Iraq War

Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

Know your BFEE: Reinhard Gehlen

Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush Armed Saddam

Know your BFEE: Killer Businessmen who put Power and Profit before Country

Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to Nuke Vietnam

Know your BFEE: Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles

Know your BFEE: Poppy’s CIA Made Saddam Into the Butcher of Baghdad

Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

Know your BFEE: R. James Woolsey, Turd of War

Know your BFEE: Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook

Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War

Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush

Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Know your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes

Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

Know your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich

Know your BFEE: George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L.

Know your BFEE: Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist

Know your BFEE: George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!

Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incorporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist


These aren’t labeled “Know Your BFEE,” but they’re meant in the same spirit:

Poppy Bush Involved in JFK Assassination -- BFEE's Spooked!

Vietnam and Iraq Wars Started by Same People

BFEE Turd Daniel Pipes tied to DANISH CARTOONS

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

Plame Affair makes clear: USA is run by TRAITORS.

BFEE Is More than Capable of Bombing Their Own Countrymen

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x46709


And for all my friends in those hard-to-reach areas:


A Short History of Conspiracy Theory

Note: Not all Bushes are evil or beholden to the BFEE, nor are all those who gain by its existence members of the immediate or extended Bush family. Nor are the Bushes at the pinnacle of global power -- it is quite likely they serve an even wealthier class. What they all have in common is the use of the powers of the government of the United States for accumulating wealth and power for themselves, their associates and the other affiliated beneficiaries among the world's financial elite and authoritarian regimes. Always, they gain at the expense of the people and nations of the world, including the citizens of the United States and its Constitution.

PS: A most hearty welcome to DU, Brush Fire.

[leftstreet]

19. k&r - thanks for all your work

:thumbsup:

[Octafish]

45. The Charmed Lives of the Crony Capitalists - How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Here's the story, courtesy of a Wall Street insider:

The Charmed Lives of the Crony Capitalists

How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

By PAM MARTENS
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
October 17 / 20, 2008

In 1897, when 8-year old Virginia O’Hanlon posed her Santa Claus query to the New York Sun, she received a heart-warming editorial response reassuring her that “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist….”

Today, we hand our 8 year olds a $13 trillion national debt while our Congress hands Wall Street banksters the national purse without so much as a hearing to determine the cause of the debt collapse. Worse still, the money is doled out to the very same individuals who leveraged their institutions to casino status.

Americans are correctly outraged at the spectacle of U.S. crony capitalism crashing stock and bond markets around the globe while simultaneously watching the poster boys of crony capitalism on Monday, October 13, 2008 march up the granite steps of the United States Treasury building in their Armani shoes and heist a fresh $125 Billion of taxpayer dough in broad daylight.

The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson’s, $700 billion bailout plan to buy up distressed mortgage assets has spun off its own $250 billion subsidiary plan (skipping that pesky detail called taxation with representation) to inject $125 billion in equity capital into 9 of the biggest commercial and investment banks in the country. Another $125 billion may possibly go to smaller regional banks and thrifts, assuming they will sign on to the deal.

And what will taxpayers get for their investment in these financial firms whose stock prices are getting hammered as the public recoils in revulsion at what they have done to our financial system? The taxpayers, who were not invited to send their own legal representative to the negotiating table, will receive a paltry 5% dividend, exactly half of what Warren Buffett received for his recent investment in General Electric, a company that actually makes something real, like jet engines and light bulbs.

Now we learn from the U.S. Treasury web site that it has hired the law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett to represent our taxpayer interests going forward at a cost to us of $300,000 for six months work. But we’re not allowed to know their hourly wages; that information has been blacked out on the Treasury’s contract. Curiously, the Treasury has named in its contract the specific lawyers it wants to work for us. Two of those are Lee A. Meyerson and David Eisenberg. Mr. Meyerson has been a central player in facilitating the bank consolidations that have led to the present train wreck, including building JPMorgan Chase from the body parts of Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan and Bank One.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/martens10172008.html

"(W)e hand our 8 year olds a $13 trillion national debt while our Congress hands Wall Street banksters the national purse without so much as a hearing to determine the cause of the debt collapse."

Thanks for giving a damn, leftstreet! Sorry it took so long for me to reply.

[Swamp Rat]

20. k&r

:hi: ¡hola amigo!

[Octafish]

48. How Wall Street s Scam Artists Turned Home Mortgages Into Economic WMDs

You scientist types have an excellent understanding of numbers, Swampus Rattivius.
Ink-stained mopes like me have to go by the graphs-n-stuff.

When it comes to investing, my chums advised "Real Property."

Joshua Holland explains how

How Wall Street s Scam Artists Turned Home Mortgages Into Economic WMDs

By Joshua Holland
AlterNet
Posted on October 18, 2008, Printed on October 18, 2008

EXCERPT...

All these exotic financial vehicles are essentially contracts between two parties -- like bets between two fans -- that lay largely outside of the regulatory system that governs most of the banking sector.

In theory, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this -- these are tools that allow sophisticated investors to control the amount of risk they're taking on when they plunk down their money to buy into some sort of security. But in practice, these exotic financial instruments have the potential to devastate the world economy. And you don't need an MBA and an intimate understanding of how "obligation acceleration derivatives" work to understand how.

You only need to understand a few central aspects of the huge market in debt-based securities that's grown up over the past three decades. In large part, they exist in a shadowy world free of regulation or oversight, they allow investment bankers to repackage risky investments into something that appears to be relatively safe (or at least safer than they really are), and they allow investors to "leverage" their investments -- essentially buying securities that they don't have the money to purchase -- to a far greater degree than traditional investments allow.

During the 1990s, when interest rates were low around the world, the demand for more exotic "structured" investments -- including various derivatives and swaps -- skyrocketed. And the investment bankers who were structuring these fancy new bets had little to lose in giving investors what they wanted, as long as the housing market -- the hard assets underpinning all this theoretical wealth -- held up.

In order to meet the demand, those financial gurus also put enormous pressure on the lending industry to lower its standards and pump out more and more loans for everything from houses to small businesses to consumers' spending -- the raw materials for the new investment vehicles they were creating out of the ether.

By doing so, speculators in the "unreal" financial economy had an enormous amount of influence over events in the real economy.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/103514/how_wall_street%27s_scam_artists_turned_home_mortgages_into_economic_wmds/

Thank you for being in the real-world, Compay Bueno. Your illustration, er, sums up the situation, perfectly.

This thing we're in isn't an imaginary crisis.
The turds that be have a plan to get us out of it.
It's called World War.

¡P'al Paraguay!

[tom_paine]

21. K & R

[Octafish]

50. Dr. Paulson's Magic Potion Is Pure Poison for Us

Greider points out the real picture in the scam -- We the People are left holding the bag. An empty bag.

Dr. Paulson's Magic Potion Is Pure Poison for Us

By William Greider, The Nation
Posted on October 17, 2008, Printed on October 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/103397/

EXCERPT...

Nationalization is the "shock therapy." We may yet see it before this turmoil is ended. Naturally, it is ideologically offensive to the Bush administration, and especially to Paulson's old colleagues and rivals on Wall Street. Taking control would impose on the government the daunting challenge of reshaping these large and overbearing institutions, winnowing out banks that deserve to die and instilling in the survivors formal obligations to serve the national interest they have willfully betrayed for a generation. That task will probably be left to Paulson's successors.

Without taking explicit control, the government is simply betting the bankers will cooperate in exchange for rescue. Maybe they will start lending again, but maybe not: banks are in a deep hole of their own making, having lost more than a trillion. Typically, they apply tightfisted lending tactics to heal balance sheets -- the opposite of what the country needs from them now. The $125 billion or so targeted for the nine biggest banks will not be enough to heal them all. Institutional Risk Analytics, a bank monitoring firm, says $250 billion in capital injections "will be just the down payment to get through the wave of loan losses headed for some of the larger players in the US banking sector."

Meanwhile, the money provides a feel-good tonic for the club -- the relatively small congregation of financial institutions that exert such oppressive influence over business and society, not to mention politics. Paulson is handing them cheap money (ours) that will initially earn only 5 percent, even as Warren Buffett gets 10 percent dividends on the capital he provided Goldman Sachs. Nor does the public get a controlling interest, or even seats on the board, for its generosity. The choices Paulson makes as he hands out the public money will effectively design the future -- making the big boys even bigger and more arrogant, since they know the government will not let them fail. Informed financiers already see the nine largest banks consolidating into four behemoths. The next president and treasury secretary (if they have the nerve) will have to confront this question of scale and cut the big banks down to size -- small enough to fail without damaging society.

Dr. Paulson's latest cure has once again left out something important -- American society at large. There's a lot of cheap talk about Main Street, but nothing in this plan helps the folks who are taking it in the neck through bankruptcy or unemployment. When Paulson met privately with the CEOs from the nine leading banks, he presumably asked them to be kind to the debtors. He ought to have commanded the bankers, one by one, to stop foreclosures, roll over debts and give people time to work their way out of their predicament, or else government would shut its lending window and dump the banks' stock.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/103397/dr._paulson%27s_magic_potion_is_pure_poison_for_us/

Thanks for all you do, tom_paine!

[dmr]

25. Kick

Thank you for putting this together, and reminding all of us that Poppy is deeply involved in all of this. He and his New World Order, my ass ...

[Time for change]

26. One of my major goals in life

after I retire, if I can find the time and the energy, is to write a book about the U.S. slide into imperialism and tyranny -- regardless of how this all turns out. If and when I do that, your journal will certainly serve as an invaluable resource.

[Norrin Radd]

28. kr

[bobthedrummer]

31. K&R#39 + a crosspost to an active GD thread "What was AIG 'insuring' for all those black budget

networks?" (started 10-4-2008)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4169766

Thanks again for your continuing efforts here Sir! A lot of US Know our BFEE as a result.
:patriot:

Think globally, act locally...

[dmr]

32. Questions:

This subject is way too deep and complicated for me to understand. I'm in the middle of reading (and re-reading sentences and paragraphs trying to understand ... )

I know Barack Obama is an intelligent man and is surrounded by the like. Do you think his finance people have a true and firm grasp of the intricacies of the frauds perpetrated? And, if so, do they have the knowledge and expertise to recommend to Obama on how to sew up the loopholes to prevent further frauds?

Instead of the current group of financial people working on this problem (as in Goldman Sachs) would it not be best to bring in fresh faces to tackle these issues? I'm thinking about FDR, because if I remember correctly, FDR didn't trust those who brought the nation to it's knees and brought in new college graduates to work on the nation's fiances? Am I remembering correctly?

There is much for Obama to tackle (I already consider Obama my next president). One issue I want tackled is not only the repair to our Constitution and Federal agencies, but a way to assure another rogue presidential coup doesn't do the same or worse harm that the Bush* administration has inflicted. Protection - to stop dead in the tracks changes that work against our nation.

Saying that, once regulations, supervision and oversight is re-instated, is there anything Obama and a Democratic Congress can to do to protect against this from happening again. History repeats itself. What type of strong amendment needs to be enacted to keep the banking and Wall Street industry, and ultimately collaborating with unwise and perhaps greedy Congress-critter enablers from becoming predators again?

I've heard very smart people say that they don't even understand the who, what, when, where, why and how come of many of the financial wheeling and dealing contracts that have brought us this mess. No doubt this is an on-purpose design. Certainly, our government can change that. If an accountant can't understand the deal, then it must be made illegal for that particular deal to go through. Stands to reason, how can any deal be effectual if it's not fully understood. Common sense is common sense.

Please forgive me if my little old lady questions are grade school-ish, but I truly would appreciate your comments.

Thank you.
:hi: :)

PS: I LOVE your BFEE posts.
I :hug: them!

[Octafish]

44. WaPo: What Went Wrong

Thank you for the kind words, dmr. Thanks also for your excellent analysis.

The main objective of most crooks is to get away with their criminality. It follows, in the case of the financial industry, that a way to accomplish this is to make things so complex obfuscates the reality. Derivatives became an instrument for hiding who owed what to whom for when and how.

What Went Wrong

How did the world's markets come to the brink of collapse? Some say regulators failed. Others claim deregulation left them handcuffed. Who's right? Both are. This is the story of how Washington didn't catch up to Wall Street.

By Anthony Faiola, Ellen Nakashima and Jill Drew
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; A01

A decade ago, long before the financial calamity now sweeping the world, the federal government's economic brain trust heard a clarion warning and declared in unison: You're wrong.

The meeting of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets on an April day in 1998 brought together Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. -- all Wall Street legends, all opponents to varying degrees of tighter regulation of the financial system that had earned them wealth and power.

Their adversary, although also a member of the Working Group, did not belong to their club. Brooksley E. Born, the 57-year-old head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, had earned a reputation as a steely, formidable litigator at a high-powered Washington law firm. She had grown used to being the only woman in a room full of men. She didn't like to be pushed around.

Now, in the Treasury Department's stately, wood-paneled conference room, she was being pushed hard.

Greenspan, Rubin and Levitt had reacted with alarm at Born's persistent interest in a fast-growing corner of the financial markets known as derivatives, so called because they derive their value from something else, such as bonds or currency rates. Setting the jargon aside, derivatives are both a cushion and a gamble -- deals that investment companies and banks arrange to manage the risk of their holdings, while trying to turn a profit at the same time.

Unlike the commodity futures regulated by Born's agency, many newer derivatives weren't traded on an exchange, constituting what some traders call the "dark markets." There were now millions of such private contracts, involving many of Wall Street's top firms. But there was no clearinghouse holding collateral to settle a deal gone bad, no transparent records of who was trading what.

Born wanted to shine a light into the dark. She had offered no specific oversight plan, but after months of making noise about the dangers that this enormous market posed to the financial system, she now wanted to open a formal discussion about whether to regulate them -- and if so, how.

Greenspan, Rubin and Levitt were determined to derail her effort. Privately, Rubin had expressed concern about derivatives' unruly growth. But he agreed with Greenspan and Levitt that these newer contracts, often called "swaps," weren't exactly futures. Born's agency did not have legal authority to regulate swaps, the three men believed, and her call for a discussion had real-world consequences: It would cast doubt over the legality of trillions of dollars in existing contracts and create uncertainty over how to operate in the market.

SNIP...

The crisis has prompted second thoughts. Goldschmid, the former SEC commissioner and the agency's general counsel under Levitt, looks back at the long history of missed opportunities and sighs: "In hindsight, there's no question that we would have been better off if we had been regulating derivatives -- and had a clearinghouse for it."

Levitt, too, thinks about might-have-beens. "In fairness, while Summers and Rubin and I certainly gave in to this, we were not in the same camp as the Fed," he said. "The Fed was really adamantly opposed to any form of regulation whatsoever. I guess if I had to do it over again, I certainly would have pushed for some way to give greater transparency to products which turned out to be injurious to our markets."

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403343.html

Great Resource from WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/risk/

It's like the 3-card monte fellah or a good carny working the mopes.



They like to say everyone's a winner. Most get an empty bag.

Only one really wins -- especially in class warfare.

[antigop]

33. George H. Walker,kingpin of the firm that emerged from the collapse of Lehman

http://www.pionline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081002/REG/810029986/1008

George H. Walker is the kingpin in the newly reincarnated asset management firm that’s emerging from the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

When Mr. Walker assumed the role of managing director and global head of the investment management unit of the New York-based investment bank late in 2006, an investment banker said: “Everyone in the universe is watching what George Walker will do at Lehman.”

The same is true now that Mr. Walker has managed to negotiate a deal to sell the $230 billion asset management division he heads to private equity firms Bain Capital Partners LLC, New York, and Hellman & Friedman LLC, San Francisco.

[Dystopian]

34. KandR

Way too much to absorb in one sitting...working on it.
Thank you for an incredible job of piecing this all together for us...


peace~

[Pooka Fey]

35. K&R

[earth mom]

36. HUGE K & R!

:kick:

[dailykoff]

37. All they want is our money, blood, and property

and oh yeah our peksy votes or at least a reasonable fascimile.

:thumbsup:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

42. CashnCarry, oops, KashKari to the rescue!

;)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4229141&mesg_id=4229141

K & R

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

46. Wow! Incredibly, they not only legalized mass fraud but used national treasure to advance it.

Of course, nowadays, it's perfectly acceptable for the neocons to engage in mass fraud against the American people to promote a level of mass economic fraud never seen in human history!!!!

Christ!!! It's mind-boggling!!! The real terrorists are in our house, the White House!

[HughBeaumont]

47. A whole family of murderers, criminals, drug addicts, warmongers, philanderers, spooks and enablers.

Like a rogues gallery:

Top, L to R: Mr. Security, Muleboy the Fixer (w. son Damien), Daddy Grand Cyclops, The Failure Fuhrer, The Joker.

Bottom, L to R: The Student (w. daughter Mugshot McXanax), The Question Mark, The Womb of Doom, The Silverado Kid.

The sooner this scourge of a family (with the possible exception of Dorothy, who doesn't seem to be as evil as the rest of that family) returns to the lava from which they were shat out of, the better off humanity will be.

Speaking of Mr. Security, why WAS his role in 9-11 downplayed?

George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.

The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a ``completion contract" to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center ``up to the day the buildings fell down."

It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.
(snip)

Marvin P. Bush, the president's youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked.

(snip)

Marvin Bush's last year on the board at Stratesec coincided with his first year on the board of HCC Insurance, formerly Houston Casualty Co., one of the insurance carriers for the WTC. He left the HCC board in November 2002.

But none of these connections has been looked at during the extensive investigations since 9/11. McDaniel says principals and other personnel at Stratesec have not been questioned or debriefed by the FBI or other investigators. Walker declined to answer the same question regarding KuwAm, referring to the public record.
(snip)

On the very day of the tragic space shuttle crash, the government appointed an independent investigative panel, and rightly so. Why didn't it do the same on Sept. 12, 2001?

As always, Octafish . .. keep the bombs bursting in air. In this life or the next . . . we are going to get our day. And the Bewsh's will get theirs.

[lonestarnot]

49. King and bking! Too late to ring!

Thanks Octafish! I knew that patsy Karshi was going to be the assistant in further theft. :grr: