In his testimony before the US Senate Budget Committee this week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was asked by our favorite socialist Senator, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, to identify the recipients of some $2.2 trillion of taxpayer guaranteed dollars to date (an amount that doesn’t include the $700 billion from Treasury’s TARP program).
Bernanke refused to provide the names, claiming that would only add to the market’s instability, somehow…
Question– are the recipient of the Fed’s funds:
A.) The same people who gamed the system to begin with;
B.) The private parties (hedge funds and the like) with whom the latest iteration of the Geitner bailout plan envisions partnering with the US government to “save” the world’s financial system by jointly buying/removing “toxic assets” from insolvent banks for pennies on the dollar (which, if proven worthless they would walk away from, leaving the US taxpayer to eat the losses; or, should they prove to be worth more than their purchase price, pocket the profits);
C.) Both.
If option “C,” they have my vote for being the greatest white collar criminals of all time. It would mean that these self-proclaimed “Masters of the Universe” have perfected the first they sell you the disease and then they sell you the cure ploy.
God, I hope not.
Like I said last fall (here, here and here), there’s no rescuing this beast. Better to have let it all collapse and start over with an economic system that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
(For an account of the specific mathematical formula used by derivates traders that helped collapse the world’s economic system, see this month’s feature story in Wired titled: “Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street”.)
I read it. I’m weeping.
;-(
Read it and weep.
Steps to Financial Cataclysm Paved with Industry Dollars
i really, really, really, really wonder if the bankers are the only ones who are going to be ‘rescued’. while we keep hearing that they have to be saved in order for the rest of us to do okay, i’m having a very hard time believing it. there are too many bankers and wall street people calling the shots, inside and outside the government. the economy should not be dependent on or measured by the stock market. the market should be for speculators with some extra cash.
the easiest and fastest way to stimulate the economy is to give all the tarp money to local credit unions. all loans should be given locally so that loan officers can see with their own eyes where the money is going.
I like it!
And yeah; WTF died and made the DOW the arbiter of ANYTHING??
there was no doubt that a huge chunk of the bailout money would disappear down a black hole aka friends of George/Dick/Hank’s pockets
we have been taken to the cleaners, and we didnt come back all nice and starched.
True, but I doubt there’s a black hole deep enough to hide that much money well; karma’s bitch.