Wall Street Fat Cats Are Trying to Pocket Billions in Bailout Cash
By Nomi Prins, AlterNet. Posted November 7, 2008.
The election results pretty much confirmed the extent to which Main Street is rightly livid about the Wall Street mentality that led to our financial crisis. During his historic victory speech, President-elect Barack Obama told supporters, and the rest of the world, “If this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.”But, it seems that Wall Street didn’t get that memo. It turns out that the nine banks about to be getting a total equity capital injection of $125 billion, courtesy of Phase I of The Bailout Plan, had reserved $108 billion during the first nine months of 2008 in order to pay for compensation and bonuses.
Paying Wall Street bonuses was not supposed to be part of the plan. At least that’s how Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson explained it to Congress and the American people. So, on Oct. 1, when the Senate, including Obama, approved the $700 billion bailout package, the illusion was that this would magically loosen the credit markets, and with taxpayer-funded relief, banks would first start lending to each other again, and then, to citizens and small businesses. And all would be well.
That didn’t happen. Which is why it’s particularly offensive that the no-strings-attached money is going to line the pockets of Wall Street execs. The country’s top investment bank (which since Sept. 21 calls itself a bank holding company), Goldman Sachs, set aside $11.4 billion during the first nine months of this year — slightly more than the firm’s $10 billion U.S. government gift — to cover bonus payments for its 443 senior partners, who are set to make about $5 million each, and other employees.
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Two of those firms, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt this year. Bank of America is acquiring a third, Merrill Lynch. Shares in the remaining two, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, took a 60 percent nosedive this year.
Yet, that didn’t stop their campaign contribution money from spewing out. Goldman was Obama’s largest corporate campaign contributor, with $874,207. Also in his top 20 were three other recipients of bailout capital: JP Morgan/Chase, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.
I’m ready for some “Change we can believe in”, but I doubt it will come from those in Washington who are bought and paid for.
PTSD
Yes, although we've been inundated with the "obamative" aftergrowth of unity, I still have not recovered from understanding just where we are headed. Of course this morning's interview of the new chief of the white house staff (wonder if that is politically correct as I've heard it called the black house now), Emmanuel, we still don't know ... I sure did feel Bob Scheiffer's pain as he questioned, without answers. Sounded like more of the same. I suppose Rahm didn't want to steal any of bo's glory.
Had there been a fair and honest election, I would not have minded an African American elected to office...say someone of Alan Keys stature. But that did not happen did it.
Instead we elected a man, who at his first press conference, made references to Nancy Reagon's seances in the White House, which she did not. She did consult an astrologer, but it was Hillary who had the seances to invoke the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt. He then had to call Nancy to apologize. I fear that's just the first of many gaffes...he'll definitely need a teleprompter while in office. Stick to the script mutt, I mean BO.
But back to bo's first appointment, who speaketh out of both sides of his mouth....who, in fact, sat on the board of Freddie Mac, when the sh-t first began happening with this austere organization. Rahm also benefited from some hedge funds...I say this lightly, as benefited, meaning he made a sh-tload of money prior to the crash we are seeing today...as in the Clinton administration. Remember, Hillary made some REAL GOOD investments back then too...turning $1,000 into $100,000 overnight. Must be nice to be near the kind of power that can "hundred-duple" your investments....can you say 10,000 % profit? That was then, I don't think you can do that now, or can you? Yeah, take the markets down far enough, and they will rebound, if not the next day, one day, when we crawl out of this mess.
As I heard the pundits speak on George Stephanobaminus show this morning, I could hear all them answering with a cha-ching in their voice and the behemoth in the background running the paper machine grinding out more dollars...giving the federal reserve ample time to "dry" those $1 (promissory) bills before January 21, 2009.
I truly believe, as I did before the election, that we are not going to come out of this lightly and what is coming is an undesired blovation of empty promises...thus my cause for PTSD.
Its been quite hard for my little brain to wrap itself around what has happened. As I watched the after (math) party, Oprah crying, Jesse "someone needs to castrate him (BO) in an open mike" Jackson crying, the multitudes crying, "Yes we can", I had to wonder WTF?
He's no Moses, as a Bishop crowned him last week. I can't see him leading us out of the wilderness of financial collapse.
However, I can see him declaring Martial Law and bringing about a chaos that will allow him to become el presidente for life. Unfortunately, I see too much viral activity on the web to know there are folks that are getting prepared for such an event.
You, readers, need to be LISTENING for what "may" (and I do hope its not true), be coming. Don't think YOUR (Mommy and Daddy, who takes care of you) government will do just that...its not set up that way, never has been, never will take care of you. However, on the other hand, it (the M&D state) will take you. It already has...Just look around, first the housing regulators under Fannie and Freddie, then the banking system (two more banks fell this weekend and more to come), and now the auto industry is in a state of collapse. What is next?
The deck of cards were stacked long ago, we were too selfish to believe it could happen. Now we have a smooth talker saying it won't happen in the first 100 days...maybe not in his first term, but in his second. Uhhhhh? Second? Wait, wasn't it going to be ok, when he took office the first time?
Then "W" comes out to greet the Press the day after the election asking if it was ok if he quit the office now? Personally, after all the beating he's taken over policies developed by and kept in check by the former administration, through their agents in Congress, I'd want to leave too.
The 700 billion dollar BAILOUT, RESCUE wasn't needed. Talking with an old economist, who knows his sh-t, said the actual bailout of the housing crisis was a mere $85 billion. Yep, that's right, eighty-five billion. So where did the other $625 billion go?
As I recall, and you should too, the plan started out with a mere 3, THREE pages which by weeks end, it wound up over 480 pages of grift, greed and graft...just what McCain was talking about.
Puleez, whatever you do, dig for information...its out there, you just need to look at it. Plain as day.
It wasn't the fact that BO is black...I could care less about that. I just don't like the company he's kept all these years and he's kept company. That too, will come out in the wash.
What you don't know is that although the Supreme Court did not stop the election on the 4th, they have asked Obama to produce a vault copy of his birth certificate by December 1. And you think he suspended his campaign, to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii? Not that I am a conspiracy theorist, but one has to wonder........especially since we didn't know she suffered from anything other than osteoporosis and more recently, a broken hip, when the day before elections, she dies. Bet he does come up with a "vault" certificate now, no one alive to dispute it. And the statement issued by the campaign that they would have a private service later? Duh, was she cremated? They holding her in cold storage? Wow, Granny, what a way to go! Oh, and lest I forget, Granny Toots had voted by absentee ballot before she died. Did she actually vote, or someone "help" her vote?
See why I suffer from post traumatic stress disorder?
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