FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Too Big To Fail’ Category

For those of you critical of the Occupy Wall Street protests: While I admit that the lead has been taken by the left, and their ‘proposed fixes’ are terrible, that doesn’t mean they are not absolutely correct in what they are doing by pointing out the criminality of Wall Street and its capture of our government. Do you LIKE the bailouts that are to this day continuing to destroy our economy and …our country?! These ongoing bailouts are the biggest welfare entitlements the world has ever known – and it has all been YOUR taxpayer money going to Wall Street!

FedUpUSA first started protesting on Wall Street in April 2008 – and we called for an occupation then too! THIS IS WHERE IT ALL STARTED!  The only thing different about our message in this video is that we do not propose more communism to solve what is essentially an already communist government/Wall Street collusion.

What is keeping Tea Party folk, independents and conservatives from joining this and changing the dialogue about remedies? Why are you allowing the message to be ‘socialism is the only alternative to Wall Street fascism?’ Oh, there’s Wall Street fascism alright, but socialism and communism are NOT the answers. The answer is to stop allowing Wall Street, Banks and special corporations to pay Congress to write favorable legislation for them, to the detriment of the rest of us. This is neither capitalism nor a democratic republic form of government. It is CORRUPTION of our system.

Why are YOU letting the message against corruption, crony bailouts, devaluation of our dollar resulting in rampant price inflation, and failure to enforce already existing law upon certain ‘exempt’ entities become co-opted by far-leftist, communist radicals? Probably the same reason many in the Tea Party allowed it to be co-opted by far-right factions screaming against gays. This is and always has been about the shadow banking system (Wall Street) controlling the quantity of money in our economy, and using that money to purchase legislation while keeping politicians in office that will continue to favor Wall Street and the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks, essentially paying our government to look the other way when Wall Street commits criminal acts.

You do realize that the reason everyone is losing their jobs, homes and our government and most individuals are up to their eyeballs in debt is because the government is funneling all of our money to the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks both here in around the world, yes? Or don’t you understand that THIS is why there has been a $32 TRILLION net worth gain for the TOP 5% in this country, while the rest of us have lost a like amount? If you believe the system that orchestrated THAT is capitalism, I have a bridge to sell you. Stop defending our current system – it hasn’t been capitalism in decades; it is a kleptocracy. And don’t try telling me that ONLY the government is to blame (yes, they are part of this) – but Wall Street is just as guilty because THIS type of thing is NOT the doing of people in government! These are uniquely wall Street ‘innovations’ – the very innovations that have brought our country to its knees with the perverse amount of leverage they have put into the financial system.

The Wall Street and corporate-money capture of our government MUST END. Pick your enemies wisely but join the battle that is worthy and if need be, change the dialogue – Just like Dylan Ratigan is talking about in the video below.

Now listen to what Dylan Ratigan has to say:

Well, here’s something that’s gone mostly unnoticed.  From the FDIC:

Acting chairman stresses that the agency’s own planning is just as important as plans submitted by companies.

Seems that the big banks were asked to submit a sort of ‘plan’ for their own demise.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday approved a rule requiring the nation’s largest banks to submit “living wills” to help regulators shut them down in an orderly way if they are seized on the brink of failure.

And now it appears that the FDIC may not be willing to wait much longer.

Personally, I think we’ve waited long enough.  This country can function just fine without the banks that have committed fraud.  You know, the ones for which the majority of our taxpayer money has been providing life support.  Allowing these banks to fail is probably the best thing that can happen….well, besides the officers and board members of these banks being prosecuted and put in jail.  Then we’d be cooking with gas.

The World's Largest Banks Beg For Bailout From Congress 2008

This week’s wild actions on Wall Street should serve as a stark reminder that few investors have any clue as to what is really going on beneath the surface of America’s troubled economy. But this week did bring startling clarity on at least one front. In its August policy statement the Federal Reserve took the highly unusual step of putting a specific time frame for the continuation of its near zero interest rate policy.

Moving past the previously uncertain pronouncements that they would “keep interest rates low for an extended period,” the Fed now tells us that rates will not budge from rock bottom for at least two years. Although the markets rallied on the news (at least for a few minutes) in reality the policy will inflict untold harm on the U.S. economy. The move was so dangerous and misguided that three members of the Fed’s Open Market Committee actually voted against it. This level of dissent within the Fed hasn’t been seen for years.

Many economists have short-sightedly concluded that ultra low interest rates are a sure fire way to spur economic growth. The easier and cheaper it is to borrow, they argue, the more likely business and consumers are to spend. And because spending spurs growth, in their calculation, low rates are always good. But, as is typical, they have it backwards.

I believe that ultra-low interest rates are among the biggest impediments currently preventing genuine economic growth in the US economy. By committing to keep them near zero for the next two years, the Fed has actually lengthened the time Americans will now have to wait before a real recovery begins. Low rates are the root cause of the misallocation of resources that define the modern American economy. As a direct result, Americans borrow, consume, and speculate too much, while we save, produce, and invest too little.

It may come as a shock to some, but just like everything else in a free market, interest rate levels are best determined by the freely interacting forces of supply and demand. In the case of interest rates, the determinative factors should be the supply of savings available to lend and the demand for money by people and business who want to borrow. Many of the beneficial elements of market determined rates are explained in my book How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. But allowing the government to determine interest rates as a matter of policy creates a number of distortions.

It was bad enough that the Fed held rates far too low, but at least a fig leaf of uncertainty kept the most brazen speculators in partial paralysis. But by specifically telegraphing policy, the Fed has now given cover to the most parasitic elements of the financial sector to undertake transactions that offer no economic benefit to the nation. Specifically, it will simply encourage banks to borrow money at zero percent from the Fed, and then use significant leverage to buy low yielding treasuries at 2 to 4 percent. The result is a banker’s dream: guaranteed low risk profit. In other words it will encourage banks to lend to the government, which already borrows too much, and not lend to private borrowers, whose activity could actually benefit the economy.

This reckless policy, designed to facilitate government spending and appease Wall Street financiers, will continue to starve Main Street of the capital it needs to make real productivity-enhancing investments. American investment capital will continue to flow abroad, denying local business the means to expand and hire. It also destroys interest rates paid to holders of bank savings deposits which traditionally had been a financial pillar of retirees. In addition, such an inflationary policy drives real wages lower, robbing Americans of their purchasing power. The consequence is a dollar in free-fall, dragging down with it the standard of living of average Americans.

Until interest rates are allowed to rise to appropriate levels, more resources will be misallocated, additional jobs will be lost, government spending and deficits will continue to grow, the dollar will keep falling, consumer prices will keep rising, and the government will keep blaming our problems on external factors beyond its control. As the old adage goes, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Peter Schiff for TownHall Finance

A brave new banking system – while public is told banking system is healthy FDIC quietly grows troubled bank list by 180 and adds over 1,600 employees in the last two years to deal with bank failures.

The banking system in the United States rests on a very thin layer of faith and that faith has been shaken by the current financial crisis.  The retail banking system is largely a facade that now latches on to taxpayer bailouts to fund speculative investments through their investment banking divisions.  The repeal of Glass-Steagall has been an absolute failure for allowing this commingling of financial functions.  I find it interesting that while we get a public stance that all is well on the banking front, we find that the FDIC keeps adding employees to handle bank failures and the number of problem institutions continues to grow.  Of course this is the kind of information that is buried deep in websites and financial statements while most of the press focuses on distractions.

Why would FDIC keep expanding through recovery?

I was digging through FDIC data and found the below information rather enlightening.  While we are told that the condition of our financial system is getting better, we find that the FDIC is adding more and more employees while the number of banks deemed “problems” continues to grow:

Source:  FDIC

In the last two years the number of problem institutions jumped from 702 in 2008 to 888 currently.  We have also added many more FDIC employees (from 6,557 to 8,233).  What I find illuminating is that in 2007, at the peak of the credit bubble only 50 institutions were regarded as problematic.  In other words, the main institution overseeing our banking system and deposits had no clue at the apex of the bubble that a problem was imminent.  Should we now be surprised that we are told that banking conditions are healthy while the above data tells us a very different story?

Too big to succeed

In the 1990s we had anywhere from 20 to 30 banks with total assets larger than $20 billion.  At the peak of the crisis we had closer to 55 but today we are nearly back to 50.  The too big to fail banks have gotten even bigger. This was always an interesting argument taken by the financial sector.  We were told that too big to fail was part of the problem and caused a systemic meltdown.  The solution?  Make the too big to fail even bigger.  So it is no surprise that while the middle class becomes smaller and pays for the bailouts this select group of banks become even bigger and more profitable. The list of giant banks is troubling:

Read more at My Budget360

I warned last year:

Anyone   who thinks that Congress will use the current financial regulation -    Dodd-Frank – to break up banks in the middle of an even bigger crisis  is  dreaming.   If the giant  banks aren’t broken up now – when they are threatening to take down the  world economy – they won’t be broken up next time they become insolvent either.   And see this.  In other words, there is no better time than today to break them up.

Standard and Poors is providing evidence for this assertion.

As the Financial Times notes today:

Officials fighting the next financial crisis may again bail out banks using the public purse, S&P has said, in an opinion that casts doubt on one of the fundamental tenets of US financial reform.

The rating agency said on Wednesday that the US Treasury, Federal  Reserve and Congress might rescue a large financial group rather than  allow it to fail like Lehman Brothers. Dodd-Frank, the legislation  signed into law a year ago next week, was supposed to prevent bail-outs  by allowing the government to seize and wind down safely an ailing “systemically important financial institution”, or Sifi.
 

But  in a research note, S&P said: “We believe the government may try to  avoid contagion and a domino effect if a Sifi finds itself in a  financially weakened position in a future crisis.”The agencies’ views are crucial to the fight over whether the  phenomenon of “too big to fail” has been ended. If not, the largest  banks will continue to enjoy a funding advantage over their smaller  rivals.

And see this (written after the passage of Dodd-Frank).

Why Break Up the Giant Banks?

Virtually all independent economists and financial experts say that the giant banks are too big, and that their very size is hurting the economy:

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Ed Prescott

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman

• Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan

• Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker

• Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich

• Dean     and professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School,    and  chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President  George   W.  Bush, R. Glenn Hubbard

• Former Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers

• Former chief IMF economist and economics professor Simon Johnson (and see this)

• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig (and see this)

• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard Fisher (and see this)

• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,  Thomas Bullard

• Deputy Treasury Secretary, Neal S. Wolin

• The President of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group with about 5,000 members, Camden R. Fine

• The Congressional panel overseeing the bailout (and see this)

• The head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair

• Former Tarp overseer and creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren

• The head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King

• The leading monetary economist and co-author with Milton Friedman of the leading treatise on the Great Depression, Anna Schwartz

• Economics professor and creator of the “efficient market hypothesis”, Eugene Fama

• Economics professor and senior regulator during the S & L crisis, William K. Black

• Economics professor, Nouriel Roubini

• Economics professor, James Galbraith

• Economist, Marc Faber

• Professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the Chicago Booth School of Business, Luigi Zingales

• Economics professor, Thomas F. Cooley

• Economist Dean Baker

• Economist Arnold Kling

• Former investment banker, Philip Augar

• Chairman of the Commons Treasury, John McFall

• Leading bank analyst, Chris Whalen

Why do these experts say the giant banks need to be broken up?

Well, small banks have been lending much more than the big boys.  The giant banks which received taxpayer bailouts have been harming the economy by slashing lending, giving higher bonuses, and operating at higher costs than banks which didn’t get bailed out.

As Fortune pointed out, the only reason that smaller banks haven’t been able to expand and thrive is that the too-big-to-fails have decreased competition:

Growth    for the nation’s smaller banks represents a reversal of trends from   the  last twenty years, when the biggest banks got much bigger and many   of  the smallest players were gobbled up or driven under…

As  big   banks struggle to find a way forward and rising loan losses  threaten  to  punish poorly run banks of all sizes, smaller but well  capitalized   institutions have a long-awaited chance to expand.

So the very size of the giants squashes competition, and prevents the small and medium size banks to start lending to Main Street again.

And as I noted in December 2008, the big banks are the major reason why sovereign debt has become a crisis:

The   Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is often called the “central   banks’ central bank”, as it coordinates transactions between central   banks.

BIS points out in a new report that the bank rescue packages have transferred significant risks onto   government balance sheets, which is reflected in the corresponding   widening of sovereign credit default swaps:

The   scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages also meant that   significant risks had been transferred onto government balance sheets.   This was particularly apparent in the market for CDS referencing   sovereigns involved either in large individual bank rescues or in   broad-based support packages for the financial sector, including the   United States. While such CDS were thinly traded prior to the announced   rescue packages, spreads widened suddenly on increased demand for  credit  protection, while corresponding financial sector spreads  tightened.

In  other words, by assuming huge portions of  the risk from banks trading  in toxic derivatives, and by spending  trillions that they don’t have,  central banks have put their countries  at risk from default.

A study of 124 banking crises by the International Monetary Fund found that propping banks which are only pretending to be solvent hurts the economy:

Existing  empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks  and  their borrowers can be counterproductive, resulting in increased  losses  to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive  risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a  deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance  bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and  economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance.

Cross-country   analysis to date also shows that accommodative policy  measures (such   as substantial liquidity support, explicit government  guarantee on   financial institutions’ liabilities and forbearance from  prudential   regulations) tend to be fiscally costly and that these  particular policies do not necessarily accelerate the speed of economic  recovery.

***

All too often, central banks privilege stability over cost  in the heat of the containment phase: if so, they may too liberally  extend loans to an illiquid bank which is almost certain to prove  insolvent anyway.   Also, closure of a nonviable bank is often delayed for  too long, even   when there are clear signs of insolvency (Lindgren,  2003). Since bank   closures face many obstacles, there is a tendency to  rely instead on   blanket government guarantees which, if the government’s  fiscal and   political position makes them credible, can work albeit at  the cost of placing the burden on the budget, typically squeezing future  provision of needed public services.

Now,  Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and many other European countries – as well as  the U.S. and Japan – are facing serious debt crises. We are no longer  wealthy enough to keep bailing out the bloated banks.

Indeed, the top independent experts say that the biggest banks are insolvent (see this, for example), as they have been many times before. By failing to break up the giant banks, the government will keep taking emergency measures (see this and this) to try to cover up their insolvency.  But those measures drain the life blood out of the real economy.

And by failing to break them up, the government is guaranteeing that they will take crazily risky bets again and again, and the government will wrack up more and more debt bailing them out in the future.

Moreover, Richard Alford – former New York Fed economist, trading floor economist and strategist – recently showed that banks that get too big benefit from “information asymmetry” which disrupts the free market.

Indeed, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted that giants like Goldman are using their size to manipulate the market:

“The    main problem that Goldman raises is a question of size: ‘too big to    fail.’ In some markets, they have a significant fraction of trades. Why    is that important? They trade both on their proprietary desk and on    behalf of customers. When you do that and you have a significant    fraction of all trades, you have a lot of information.”

Further,    he says, “That raises the potential of conflicts of interest, problems    of front-running, using that inside information for your proprietary    desk. And that’s why the Volcker report came out and said that we need    to restrict the kinds of activity that these large institutions have.  If   you’re going to trade on behalf of others, if you’re going to be a    commercial bank, you can’t engage in certain kinds of risk-taking    behavior.”

The giants (especially Goldman Sachs) have also used high-frequency program trading  which not only distorts the markets – making up more than 70% of stock trades – but which also lets the    program trading giants take a sneak peak at what the real (that is,    human)  traders are buying and selling, and then trade on the insider    information. See this, this, this, this and this. (This is  frontrunning,    which is illegal; but it is a lot bigger than garden variety    frontrunning, because the program traders are not only trading based on    inside knowledge of what their own clients are doing, they are also trading based on knowledge of what all other traders are doing).  Goldman also admitted that its proprietary trading program can “manipulate the markets in  unfair ways”.

Moreover, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley together hold 80% of the country’s derivatives risk, and 96% of the exposure to credit derivatives. Experts say that derivatives will never be reined in until the mega-banks are broken up – and see this – even though the lack of transparency in derivatives is one of the main risks to the economy.

The giant banks have also allegedly used  their Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG) to exchange secret information and formulate coordinated  mutually beneficial actions, all with the government’s blessings.

Again, size matters.  If a bunch of small banks did this,  manipulation   by numerous small players would tend to cancel each other  out.  But  with  a handful of giants doing it, it can manipulate the  entire economy  in  ways which are not good for the American citizen.

Further, fraud was one of the main causes of the Great Depression and the current financial crisis.  The banks are so big that they are buying off politicians so that it has become official policy not to prosecute fraud.   Indeed, everyone from Paul Krugman to Simon Johnson has said that the banks are so big and politically powerful that they have bought the politicians and captured the regulators. So their very size is allowing economy-killing corruption to flourish.

Moreover, the banks’ enormous size means that the executives make orders of magnitude more in bonuses and salary than the executives of small banks.  They are so big that their executives are living like kings.  This is making inequality worse … and rampant inequality was another primary cause of the Great Depression and the current financial crisis.

Indeed, failing to break up the big banks will result in the sale of national assets and the looting of national treasuries in order to pay off debts to the giant banks.  This, in turn, will destroy the national sovereignty of virtually every country.

Leading independent bank analyst Christopher  Whalen argues:

The  fraud and obfuscation now  underway in  Washington to protect the    TBTF  [i.e. giant or "too big  to fail"] banks … totals into the   trillions of dollars and rises to     the level of treason.

Just look at Greece.  That is our future – and see this – unless we break up the “too big to fails”.

These concepts have been known for hundreds of years:

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not   the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that   gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland;   financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object   is gain.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
- John Adams

“If   the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their   currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and   corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all   property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent   their fathers occupied”.
— Thomas Jefferson

“I  believe that   banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties  than standing   armies…The issuing power should be taken from the banks  and restored   to the Government, to whom it properly belongs.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“[It was] the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English     bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the     English and . . . the Revolutionary War.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“The   Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever    understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to    them and their kind as, quote, ‘friends of paper money. They hated the    Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful  in   winning our independence from England and King George, we could  never   truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money  system. ”
-Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 booklet “Economic Solutions”

“[T]he   creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary    assemblies…coming as they did upon the heels of the strenuous efforts    made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America [were] acts of    defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown that forgiveness was    thereafter impossible . . . [T]here was but one course for the crown   to  pursue and that was to suppress and punish these acts of    rebellion…Thus the Bills of Credit of this era, which ignorance and    prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a    reckless financial policy were really the standards of the Revolution.     they were more than this: they were the Revolution itself!”
- Historian Alexander Del Mar

“The   British Parliament took away from America its  representative money,   forbade any further issue of bills of credit,  these bills ceasing to be   legal tender, and ordered that all taxes  should be paid in coins …   Ruin took place in these once flourishing  Colonies . . . discontent   became desperation, and reached a point . . .  when human nature rises  up  and asserts itself.”
- British historian John Twells

Well, well, well.   I’m not sure what the catalyst was here, because in-your-face castigation didn’t work.   

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Whatever the reason, it’s about time.  Perhaps Winston Churchill will be proved right once again.

American’s can always be relied upon to do the right thing, after all other options have been exhausted.

I was pleasantly surprised today by Eric Odom’s blog, wherein it appears that he had a lightbulb moment.

The greatest financial theft in the History of Man

I have to warn you up front, this post is not at all optimistic. In fact, while writing this I’m feeling almost completely void of hope in the current structure of government in America.

Yesterday, while taking a break from a client’s project and stepping away from the Mac for a few hours, I ended up watching “Inside Job,” a documentary about the events that led to the 2008 financial collapse.

First, let me say there is much in this documentary I find off-putting. As is the case with many documentaries like this, there are some other agendas involved and you have to understand that in order to look for the information relevant to you.

For example, I find it extremely distasteful that George Soros and others like him are given a platform within the film. I feel the producers should have disclosed the fact that Soros actually wants and enables this type of activity to occur.

That said, the Soros agenda doesn’t change the facts put forth in the documentary. Or at least, most of them.

I knew a lot about the 2008 collapse, but I had no idea the depth of the connections between Washington and the banks on Wall Street. I know, I should already know this, but it’s easy to get caught up in the little “flash” stories of the day and in many cases they take away from the larger issues at hand.

But after seeing the documentary I started doing some research of my own. I looked into most of what was said and researched it all online yesterday and this morning. It’s all there. Yes, George Soros is interviewed and portrayed as “above the theft” in the documentary, but everything else is on the mark.

Truth is, we’ve all been had. We’re right smack in the middle of the greatest scam in History and you and I are paying the price for it. What’s worse, and possible the most hurtful, is that the work our founding fathers did, along with the lives lost defending it, is being trampled on and used for the benefit of thieves.

A post such as this can’t even begin to explore how big the problem is. For example, many of the leftist protests against the “rich” for damaging our society are actually accurate. The flaw in their effort is that they’ve subscribed to the notion that all wealthy people are in on it, which is not true. Also of note is the fact the leftists have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into believing that $250,000 revenue for a couple owning a small business makes them “rich.”

But the overall idea that a group of ultra-rich “Capitalists” are controlling the economy and Washington is in on it is, for the most part, dead on accurate.

As Glenn Beck is explaining today on his show on Fox News (which ironically details exactly what is laid out in “Inside Job”), it’s all a show. What’s a show? The federal reserve, the U.S. treasury and the administration holding the check book.

Getting back to Inside Job, another of their flaws is framing the story as a “regulation vs. Non-Regulation” war. This is flawed because when you accept the premise that they’re all in on it… both the banks and financial realm on Wall Street, and the people who left it to run the financial realm in government, more or less regulation changes nothing.

As an example, the film begins by discussing several banks in Europe who, after receiving massive infusions of taxpayer dollars, began to fall as a result of poor lending decisions and irresponsible compensation to those running the game. When government officials showed up at the bank, they were met with an army of attorneys. In most cases they weren’t able to get anywhere beyond the attorneys. In the few cases where the government official was able to make headway with the attorneys, the officials were simply offered a job with the bank, at a salary they couldn’t refuse.

What’s happening on Wall Street and in Washington is far worse. Now, in our case, the people controlling the “regulatory” bodies of government are the exact same people who built the scam. The people who ran the financial system in New York during the collapse are now running the federal reserve and treasury.

Whether or not we have Bush, Clinton or Obama as President matters little. All of them allowed Wall Street to place their power brokers in positions of power within government.

Don’t believe me? Let’s scratch the surface a little…

Timothy Geithner – United States Secretary of the Treasury under Barack Obama

In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns.[12][21] In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. Some Wall Street CEOs subsequently expressed the opinion that decisions in which Geithner participated, especially the failure to rescue Lehman, contributed to worsening the global financial crisis.[22] As a Treasury official, he helped manage multiple international crises of the 1990s[14] in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand.[15]

Geithner believes along with Henry Paulson, that the United States Department of the Treasury needs new authority to experiment with responses to the financial crisis of 2007–2011.[12] Paulson has described Geithner as “[a] very unusually talented young man…[who] understands government and understands markets.”[21]

Henry Paulson – United States Secretary of Treasury under George Bush

He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm’s Chicago office under James P. Gorter. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998;[9] eventually succeeding Jon Corzine as chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was US$37 million in 2005, and $16.4 million projected for 2006.[10] His net worth has been estimated at over $700 million.

Also of note are comments such as this one:

“Well, as you know, we’re working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.”

That comment came via Henry Paulson before September of 2008, when the financial system began to freefall into collapse.

And let’s not forget, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke led the charge to reward Wall Street’s terrible financial scam with a $700 billion check from the taxpayers.

Ben Bernanke – Chairman, Federal Reserve

On February 1, 2006, President Bush appointed Bernanke to a fourteen-year term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and to a four-year term as Chairman.[27][28] By virtue of the chairmanship, he sits on the Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System’s principal monetary policy making body.

This happened, of course, after Bernanke “served” as a leader of the “advisers” who consulted our decisions on the global economy.

In June 2005, Bernanke was named Chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and resigned as Fed Governor. The appointment was widely viewed as a test run to ascertain if Bernanke could be Bush’s pick to succeed Greenspan as Fed chairman the next year.[26] He held the post until January 2006.

We could go on, and on, and on and on… but the point is that the individuals who drove the car off the cliff were handed the keys to the new car. And that car contains the power to funnel billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to those who already showed their interest is simply to defraud the nation of its wealth, and to do so through the federal government.

So while we all talk about cutting spending here and there, Facebook and the President, a birth certificate issue and whatever else is on the talking points of the day, there is a large group of individuals pulling off the greatest theft in the History of man.

That’s a profound realization that I’m guessing most Americans would prefer ignore.

-Eric Odom

UPDATE: What kind of numbers are we talking about? Try $12.3 TRILLION as a start.

All I can say is welcome to the party, guys.  I certainly hope you brought the cavalry!  Time’s running out.  People who care about this country had better come together and act now to….

STOP THE LOOTING AND START PROSECUTING!