Nofsdad
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7087
Location: Central CA
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Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:34 pm Post subject: The Total Screwing Of America (Rant Alert)
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From Seeking Alpha again:
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| The U.S. financial system appears to be crumbling. Politicians and Washington bureaucrats are scrambling to make it appear like they are actually doing something. When politicians and Washington bureaucrats scramble, that means that taxpayers will be getting screwed again. They are throwing our money at mismanaged corporations and providing handouts to people who thought they were going to get rich buying and selling houses. |
So, while a corporation cannot be inherently evil in itself, it can be seriously mismanaged, which has been my ACTUAL point all along.
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| The people who are getting screwed are the citizens who have lived within their means, those who did not take unreasonable risks and senior citizens who are now stuck with 1.5% interest rates on their savings while inflation exceeds 8%. |
And who are quite often ridiculed or blown off or made the butt of "ribaldry" because they dare to complain about the situation.
Note: Just so there are no false accusations later... That is NOT innuendo... it's meant to be a DIRECT REFERENCE to some of the attitudes that have been displayed toward the millions of Americans who DON'T, for WHATEVER reasons, benefit from the bullshit being perpetrated by Wall Street and who object to being drug along for the ride at their own expense.
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| One of the largest mortgage lenders in the country IndyMac has been taken over by the FDIC. Some 10,000 people will lose $500 million that is not covered by insurance. The FDIC estimates that this takeover will cost the American people between $4 billion and $8 billion. If that is their estimate, you can be sure the cost will exceed $20 billion. |
Typical of everything the government does. Check the overruns on some of those no bid contracts the government has been handing out like candy the last eight years or so.
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Phil Gramm, one of John McCain’s chief economic advisors and a chief architect of deregulating the banking industry while a US Senator, has called us a nation of whiners. This is a man who is currently the vice chairman of UBS bank, making in excess of $500,000 per year in compensation.
I wouldn’t be whining if I made more money than 99.9% of all Americans, either. He has certainly earned that pay. His employer has written off $37 billion of mortgage debt so far. Stockholders are probably thrilled with his performance, as the stock has collapsed from $62 to $19 in the last year. Sounds like he is [/b]Treasury Secretary material in a McCain administration[/b]. |
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Of course, there are Democrats who are at least as financially illiterate as Mr. Gramm. Senator Chris Dodd from Connecticut showed his financial acumen when questioned about Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE).
They have more than adequate capital, in fact more than the law requires. They have access to capital markets. They're in good shape. To suggest somehow they're in major trouble is not accurate. |
And of course we learned later that Mr. Dodd, supposedly the poster boy for honesty in government, had received preferential treatment on his own million dollar plus mortgage from one of the very institutions he was defending. But what's even MORE telling in regard to Mr. Dodd's complicity in the situation came on the same day he made that little speech.
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Later that day, Hank (Mr. Bailout) Paulson committed our tax dollars to save these horribly run institutions. Fannie Mae has lost $7.7 billion in the last 9 months. Freddie Mac has lost $5.2 billion in the last 9 months. They are leveraged 60 to 1.
As the current housing crisis continues to expand, these two companies will have to write off billions more in loans and are effectively insolvent. Is Mr. Dodd lying to the American people because he doesn’t think we can handle the truth? The taxpayer will again be responsible for bailing out two of the worst run organizations on the planet. This bill will be a whopper. |
My opinion is that Mr. Dodd was lying to the American people because in effect, that's what he'd been brib... er, paid to do.
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im Rogers, famed investor, said:
They’re ruining what has been one of the greatest economies in the world. Bernanke and Paulson are bailing out their friends on Wall Street but there are 300 million Americans that are going to have to pay for this. |
Actually only 299 million. The other million are the ones either getting rich or otherwise deriving benefit from the situation. But then, who's counting?
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| Politicians and pundits have been trying to place blame for the current crisis. There is much to go around. Alan Greenspan enabled the bubble to start with 1% interest rates. The government agencies, SEC and Treasury vacated their regulatory responsibilities to the free market. Homeowners believed that home prices would go up forever. Rating agencies sold their souls by rating toxic waste as AAA credits. Poor people, who had nothing to lose, accepted the free money being handed out by banks. |
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| I think the majority of the blame should fall on the financial institutions and their leaders who should have known better. What they did constitutes fraud in my book. I think the following definition fits what these institutions have done - Intentional misrepresentation or concealment of information in order to deceive or mislead. The MBA, Masters of the Universe running the biggest financial institutions in the world created the playing field that deceived stockholders, rating agencies, and ultimately themselves. Now they beg for bailouts from the government. |
A lot more to the story can be found at Corporate Fraud + Government Intervention = Bailout Nation
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