Uhhh, Not Contractually

by Scott Creighton

“And none of the committed ($350,000,000,000) was for the purchase of mortgage related assets or conditioned on the recipients of the TARP funds undertaking any mortgage related modifications, is that correct?” Dennis Kucinich.

“uhhh, not contractually.” Kashkari

Do you want to know what a truly progressive politician looks and sounds like? Not just someone spouting platitudes and mindless rhetoric to get your vote? More after the break.

So When Will Banks Give Loans?

(It has been said several times on this site, that the Paulson Bailout Bill is nothing more than a givaway to the banking elites. I have stated that they will not use this money to improve the economic situation of this country, but rather they will use it to aquire more banks and more influence, and leave the system as is, so that they can benifit further from the downturn, now that they are flush with massive amounts of capital stolen from the taxpayers. Now we have confirmation of that from the New York Times.
““What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling…I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.” JPMorgan executive)

by Joe Nocera, NYT.

“Chase recently received $25 billion in federal funding. What effect will that have on the business side and will it change our strategic lending policy?”

It was Oct. 17, just four days after JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, agreed to take a $25 billion capital injection courtesy of the United States government, when a JPMorgan employee asked that question. It came toward the end of an employee-only conference call that had been largely devoted to meshing certain divisions of JPMorgan with its new acquisition, Washington Mutual.

Which, of course, it also got thanks to the federal government. Christmas came early at JPMorgan Chase.

Chomsky on the Current Economic Situation

by Scott Creighton

This is a pretty good interview with Noam Chomsky on the state of the economy. Chomsky lays out the current situation and points to it origins back in the late 70′s when this liberalised approach to Free-Markets came about. Though I highly reccomend this video, I have to say I think he missed something very significant in all of this. The question, of course, would be “why?”.

How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

By PAM MARTENS from Counter Punch, here.

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.

Bailout Transparency Already Over

by Chris Carey, at Bailout Sleuth

When the Treasury Department’s bailout czar provided an update this week on the government’s $700 billion plan to rescue troubled financial institutions, he vowed that it would be an “open and transparent program with appropriate oversight.”

The next day, the Treasury Department put out an announcement about a major bailout-related contract with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. that fell short in the transparency department.

read the rest here.

Either You Are With Us, Or You Are With “The Terrorists”

Thanks to David Swanson of After Downing Street.

Another $37 Billion for AIG (You Can’t Make this Stuff Up)

by Scott Creighton

The Federal Reserve Bank is forking over another $37.8 billon to AIG, the insurance company whose CEO’s were just grilled by a Congressional Sub-Committee for greed and malfeasance, just 3 weeks after the country was stood on it’s end when the Fed announced they were giving them $87 billion and just 3 days after the story broke about AIG executives spent $440,000 dollars of that money on a retreat the day after they got the money.

“The Federal Reserve Board said Wednesday that it would provide up to an additional $37.8 billion to the insurance giant, the American International Group, to help the company deal with a continuing liquidity crisis.”  New York Times

Last month this country lost 159,000 jobs and right now, economists are predicting a deep recession lasting for a very long time in our very near future; all of this, and Paulson is shoveling money at the wealthy as fast as he possibly can.

“No turnaround is seen before 2009 or later. And there is a wide divergence of opinion on the future of this bear market, which feels unlike any other because of the $700 billion federal bailout and the collapse of investment banks.”  MSNBC

“The International Monetary Fund, in its bleakest forecast in years, said on Wednesday the world economy was set for a major downturn with the United States and Europe either in or on the brink of recession.”   Reuters

The $700 billion is actually closer to $850 billion and really has only a cap for the expenditures out at one time, so it may be even more than that.

But even more disturbing is a story that came out yesterday in the New York Times that said in addition to the Fed lowering the Prime interest Rate by a full half point, they were talking about increasing the size of it’s Term Auction Facility from $300 billion to $600 billion and extending the duration of short-term loans by almost 3 fold.

In order to pay for this, the Fed is going to have to print more money.

“To pay for its burgeoning responsibilities, the Fed has no choice but to keep printing more money.”   New York Times 

The cumulative effect of these two moves will cause even greater inflation in an economy reeling from the highest inflation and unemployment rate  in a very long time.

And if this wasn’t enough, there is now talk floating around of the Fed and the U.S. Tax Payer dumping billions of dollars into the hobbled stock market in a last ditch effort to prop it back up by buying potentially worthless stock.

What this will do, is use our money, that could be going to rebuild the economy through jobs and health-care incentives and other useful efforts, it will take that money, sink it into the stock market to artificially inflate the stock prices so that the large investment houses and brokers can sell off high, and get out, before the stock market crashes for real.

That will leave the U.S. taxpayer holding 100′s of billions of dollars worth of useless stock, and leave these same wealthy CEO’s flush and ready to weather the storm of the oncoming depression. All of this, when almost every single authority on this economic mess says it was their fault in the first place.

“The IMF blamed lax economic and regulatory policies for the current global woes, saying they probably allowed the global economy to “exceed its speed limit.” At the same time, market flaws combined with policy shortcomings to allow stresses to build.”  Reuters

By design or by accident, the people responsible for this global catastrophe are the very ones that Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Congress, and the Bush Administration are trying to bailout with the last few bucks we have.

Now if this isn’t sounding like the rats are leaving the ship and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down on the way, I don’t know what does, or could. This is obvious now, people. They are purposefully collapsing our economy and robbing us blind in the process.

Why you ask?

Well, maybe because this was the plan all along, or because Obama is leading the polls and President Bush’s Directive 51 (Revised Continuity of Government Plan in the event of national disaster, terrorist attack, or Economic Crisis) is waiting in the wings. Who knows why. The point is, it’s happening.

Huge Wall Street Bailout Protests Ignored by MSM

sing with them… “Bailout? …Bullshit! …You broke it…you bought it!”

from LiveLeak

“Thousands of protestors demonstrated agains the proposed $700 Billion bail out plan for the finance and banking industry, yet the national news media in America didn’t even report it! Why not? It seems strange that this barely generated a gander from the big news outlets like ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC etc. all of whom have a presence in New York City. Despite having such a large protest event occurring in their backyard, the major news media chose not to tell the American people about it. I had to stumble upon this on the internet to find out about it. That’s really indicative of the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. media today.

The bailout is a colossal power grab and fraud completely lacking of oversight or transparency that will do nothing to restore the integrity of the financial and equity markets. It is designed to benefit only the engineers and creators of this crisis at a cost of potentially trillions of dollars to the taxpayer.”

more and a list of House members who voted FOR the Bailout after the break…