The Mercury
Prior to inheriting the White House, financial crises were the story of George W. Bush's life. He'd talk college friends into backing a Texas wildcat oil venture, drill some dry holes, then get bought out by Daddy's friends at a profit. Prior to Daddy's friends buying the Texas Rangers, his biggest payday had come from cashing out of a troubled oil company days ahead of a lousy earnings report.
Sure, there was an Securities and Exchange Commission insider-trading investigation, but Poppy Bush was president. So you know how far that went. Joe Conason narrated the sordid tale for Harper's back in 2000, but nobody wanted to hear it. The make-believe Texas rancher was a "compassionate conservative" everybody wanted to have a beer with.
So now we're all in what Poppy once called "deep doo-doo," and the same brilliant economic team that assured us that all was well two weeks ago warns, in Paul Krugman's words, that "the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now."
People have often said that if fascism came to America, it would arrive with a smiley face. So maybe it's fitting that if we're going to have Marxist-style fiscal nationalization, it should mainly benefit multimillionaires. Socialism for the wealthy; market discipline for you and me.
Judging by the plan sketched out by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, henceforth to be known as the nation's "Money Czar," he must imagine God as a celestial Realtor with lots of listings in Greenwich, Conn., where Wall Street tycoons erect competing palaces.
A recent New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten limned the scene. Uncle Scrooge McDuck's mansion would be a teardown opportunity for these jokers. Only one bullion pool to dabble in? Rather like John and Cindy McCain, they require 35,000 square feet, 10-car garages, and indoor and outdoor heated pools, along with movie theaters, basketball arenas, wine cellars, skeet-shooting ranges and servants quarters modeled upon Versailles. Literally.
They're not so much houses as theme parks, the theme being fathomless greed and elemental primate status frenzy: basic chimp stuff. Except, oops, foreclosures are mounting in Greenwich, too.
Money Czar Paulson definitely knows the territory. In 2005, his last full year as CEO of the (now shaky) investment bank Goldman Sachs, he was paid a reported $38 million for helping turn the nation's financial system into a giant shell game, as investors were duped into buying so-called "mortgage-backed securities" based upon bad loans that will never be repaid.
At bottom, Republican economic thinking is based upon two manifestly false ideas: The first, endlessly flogged by Rush Limbaugh and his co-horts, that sharply reducing taxes on people like the Bushes, the Paulsons and the McCains results in increased government revenue and greater prosperity for all. In practice, it's led to staggering budget deficits, decreasing opportunity and rising inequality. More palaces, fewer jobs.
The second is an updated version of the early Christian Pelagian heresy, denying the universality of Original Sin. Always and everywhere denouncing government oversight and regulation of banks, investment firms, brokerage houses and insurance companies, free-market fundamentalists assured us that the financial system was inherently self-regulating.
Gentlemen geniuses presided; greed was a cardinal virtue.
The result was the creation of a gigantic Ponzi scheme. The quaint concept of "due diligence" vanished from the financial system from bottom to top. Fee-churning brokers peddled adjustable-rate mortgages on overvalued real estate to suckers incapable of making the payments, then pawned off the bad loans on speculators who, in turn, repackaged them as (now worthless) securities.
Nobody ever expected to pay. A greater fool would borrow more to buy the property tomorrow.
Fearing collapse, Paulson demands an estimated $700 billion blank check to buy up the bad paper from his Wall Street friends. Here's his idea of taking responsibility: "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."
Everybody says something like what Paulson proposes must be done; everybody's probably right. Democrats, moreover, aren't without blame. Bill Clinton signed legislation greatly reducing regulatory safeguards in 1999.
We must now pray that the financial wizards who created this maze can find their way out.
Meantime, here's a phrase that should vanish from the language forever: "Republican fiscal conservative."
Comment:
Earlier this year when it was reported that 4,000 Coneticut families had lost their homes to forclusure the heartless Wall Street Big Shots said it was thier own fault. They should have been smarter they had no business getting a subprime loan in an attept to experience the American dream of owning a home.
There wasn't a damn dime available to these famlies who needed to learn to pick their selves up by ther bootstraps and go find a new place to rent.
But when it is time for the weathy to face the music they scream for corporate wefare.
Worse yet they want a special kind of "corporate welfare patriot act" that will make one of their own a "money czar" in charge of 700 BILLION of our tax dollars with no string attached !!!!
How can Paulson and his Wall Street buddies have the balls to look the taxpayer in the eye and demand this kind of welfare.
Paulson's cprprate welare decsions "may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency".
And here is the puncline.......
Nothing will be given to help families currently faced with foreclosure.
This is outrageos people have been begging for government intervention for a long time and this is not what anyone expected. This is a joke.
With 700 Billion Dollars the government could pay off every single subprime loan in America and millions of families would own their homes free and clear and bank would be paid off, but no this money is going to bail out investors and pay obscene compensation."
All of these Wall Street firms could be bailed out with a package of loans that would cost about 150 Billion, but Paulson needs 700 Billion in corporate welfare to give him "the tools to put confidence in the market."
The lawmakers should remember what Franklin Roosevelt did when hundreds of banks failed.
Roosevelt did not cave into Wall Street.
He wasn't rushed into some kind of shotgun marriage solution.
He closed all the banks and let the government review thier finances.
He called congress into emergency session and secured more than a dozen new laws regulating banks and he provided emergency relief for farmers and homeowners facind forclosures.
Roosevelts responce changed America for the better.
Congress should not reward the very people who created this mess.
Congress should listen to our rightful fury at the Wall Street subslime behind this crisis.
It's time for congress to get mad AND even with these big shots who have not expressed the slightest remorse for bringing the whole economy to a precipice, for striking fear into all decent working people.
Let's fire Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, because on Wall Street he was a driving force for ever more debt, ever more risk, ever fatter bonuses, scoring $38 million for himself in a single year.
It is time to investigate and indict and blame and jail.
The president should tell Wall street to to stabilize it's own damn markets or get ready for the Feds to shut you down.
Wall Sreet has more tan enough money to bail it's own greedy self out. Warren buffet just dropped 5 Billon on Wall Street today as he bought a big chunck of Goldman sachs.
So, let's forget about corporate welfare and start calling in the FBI.
Lets ensure that the subslimeballs do not rake in even more millions.
Forget about this corporate welfare bailout.
Forget the corporate bailout and have the first presidential debate.
As sson as Wall Street sees that there is not going to be a bail out they will buy and sell each other until the market stabelizes.
History has shown that if we do nothing Wall Street will save it's self.
J P Morgan rescued the U.S. national economy in general—and the federal government in particular—on two separate occasions.
Morgan loaned of gold to the federal government in the 1895 crisis, and was involved in the financial resolution of the
Panic of 1907.
Let the subslimeballs use their greed and the forces of the market to corect the mess they caused. Let them feel a little pain for a change.
Warren " I Just Spent 5 Billion" Buffett has called it another Pearl Harbor, as if it were a surprise attack by some foreign power.
But those who are primarily to blame are walking among ushere in Greenwich , smug, unrepentant, still rich.
Maybe some government agency will grow some balls and manage to indict these bums for racketeering.
It is time to seize those bonuses and put them in a fund to help homeowners that are in foreclosure..
All four of the outfits the FBI is investigating have been found guilty of fraud in recent years. Fannie Mae big shots concealed more than $10 billion in losses while its executives pocketed huge bonuses.
Freddie Mac fraudulently juggled $5 billion on its books.
AIG paid $1.6 billion to settle a fraud case.
Lehman Brothers was found to have propped up a shady mortgage outfit that fielded former used-car salesmen schooled in mortgage deception.
And we are going to give 700 Billion in corporate welfare to crooks like this.
We had plenty of warnings.
Whatever you want to call this crisis, it was no surprise attack.
Regular folks with basic common sense have long been saying that anything built on unthinkable debt and unconscionable profits is sure to collapse.
The big shots all told themselves they would worry about it later.
Now they are telling us to give them 700 Billion in corporate welfare that has no strings attached and we will worry about it later.
Well, now is later.
Let's get these greedy bastards where it hurts.
It is time for some asset seizures and jail time for the Wall Street fraudsters that live in Greenwich.
It is time for the Feds to foreclose on the Greenwich Mansions of the subslimeballs and help the decent hard working families who are facing forclosure.
By the way,
