Community | December 01, 2011 | 37 comments

6 Shocking Revelations About Wall Street's "Secret Government"

source: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153274/6_shocking_revelations_about_wall_street%27s_%22secre...

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WakeUpPeople

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We now have concrete evidence that Wall Street and Washington are running a secret government far removed from the democratic process. Through a freedom of information request by Bloomberg News, the public now has access to over 29,000 pages of Fed documents and 21,000 additional Fed transactions that were deliberately hidden, and for good reason. (See here and here.)

These documents show how top government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms. Here’s what we now know:

- The secret Wall Street bailouts totaled $7.77 trillion, 10 times more than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in 2008.

Knowledge of the secret bailout funds was not shared with Congress even while it was drafting and debating legislation to break up the big banks.

- The secret funding, provided at below-market rates, gave Wall Street banks an additional $13 billion in profits. (That’s enough money to hire more than 325,000 entry level teachers.)

- The secret loans financed bank mergers so that the largest banks could grow even larger. The money also allowed banks to step up their lobbying efforts.

- While Henry Paulson (Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury) was informing Congress and the public that only minor reforms were needed to protect Fannie and Freddie from collapse, he met secretly with leading Wall Street hedge fund managers -- among them his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs -- to alert them that he was about to nationalize the giant mortgage companies – a move that would eradicate nearly all the stock value of the companies. This information was enormously valuable because it allowed these hedge funds to short Fannie and Freddie and thereby make a fortune.

- While Timothy Geithner was head of the NY Federal Reserve, he argued against legislative efforts by Senator Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, to limit the size of banks because the issue was “too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions,” Kaufman recalls. Meanwhile, Geithner was fully aware of the enormous secret loans while Senator Kaufman was kept in the dark. Barney Frank, who was authoring key bank reform legislation was also not informed of the secret loans. No one in Congress was told.

So what does this all mean?

1. The big banks and hedge funds were in much more trouble than we were led to believe.

As many of us suspected, all the big banks were on their knees begging for help – secretly – while telling their investors, the public and Congress that all was well. They had gambled and lost. Under the rules of ideal capitalism, they should have suffered some “creative destruction,” and seen their shareholder value eliminated through bankruptcy, and their managers replaced. The entire banking system should have been reorganized from top to bottom as well. Instead, these colossal failures were secretly rewarded.

2. Wall Street’s secret government made sure the largest banks would grow even larger, aided by the secret funding.

While Congress was debating legislation to break up the large banks and reinstitute Glass Steagall (to separate risky investment banking from insured commercial banking,) the secret government was using public funds to grow even larger through mergers and acquisitions. Because Congress and the public were unaware of the secret funding and ill-health of all the banks, the legislation was easily defeated. As the chart below makes painfully clear, too-big-to-fail banks grew even bigger. (IMAGE1)

3. The bigger Wall Street becomes, the more government it can buy.

This part isn’t secret. As the top six banks grew larger, they spent more funds lobbying to make sure that they wouldn’t suffer any unprofitable impacts from banking reform legislation. So after the biggest banks received hundreds of billions in secret loans, they upped their lobbying funds to maintain their size and power. Read ‘em and weep: (IMAGE2)

4. Wall Street’s secret government protects its own.

At first, it’s not easy to understand how Treasury Secretary Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, could risk attending a secret meeting with giant hedge fund managers, many of whom used to work at Goldman Sachs. How could the nation’s highest ranking financial official dare to tip off these hedge fund elites about the imminent government takeover of Fannie and Freddie before Congress and the public were informed? Well, one answer is that Paulson felt obliged to warn his old comrades of the impeding nationalization. Maybe, he wanted to get them out of harm’s way just in case they were heavily involved in those markets. Or maybe he also wanted to give them a very valuable tip to profit by. But the deeper explanation, I believe, is that Wall Street’s key government officials – Paulson, Summers, Geithner, Orszag (the former Obama OMB chief who now makes millions working for CitiGroup), etc. truly believe the following:

- Wall Street banks are the best in the world and are the cutting-edge of the American economy. They are our future.
- Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers are enormously smarter and sharper than the rest of us. They deserve our admiration.
- Helping Wall Street to grow and prosper is precisely the same thing as helping all Americans and the entire economy. They deserve our support.
- Secret meetings to provide insider information are normal on Wall Street. There’s nothing wrong with warning your friends about upcoming policy decisions that might impact their profits.
- There’s also absolutely nothing wrong with providing trillions of dollars of secret loans to the best and the brightest and not telling Congress about it.

It’s all a closed loop of self-justification and self-deception: Wall Street is brilliant. What Wall Street does is for the good of the country. Helping Wall Street profit is good for the country. Hiding the truth from democratically elected leaders is also for the good of the country because Wall Street is brilliant and knows better.

And all this is deeply believed by Wall Street and its secret government, even though Wall Street, and Wall Street alone, took down the economy and killed 8 million jobs in a matter of months. Simply brilliant!

5. Wall Street is a clear and present danger to democracy. (explanation at link)
6. Occupy Wall Street is fundamentally correct, but we need more. (explanation at link)
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37 comments // 6 Shocking Revelations About Wall Street's "Secret Government"

  • ProgressThruProtest
    • +1
      ProgressThruProtest  

    • It is pretty disheartening to see how bad everything is getting so quickly and money is behind it all. All conspiracy theories aside, a cure for all sorts of cancers are available but big pharm refuses to allow a cure to be surfaced, why? Keeping people sick with "treatments" is big pharm's bread, butter, cereal and OJ. Why cure cancer when you can have someone with breast cancer paying for 10 yrs worth of chemotherapy which adds up between 20-40k.. Its sad, and its pathetic to see such a lack of humanity all in the name of money.

    • 1 year ago
  • theknopfknows
    • 0
      theknopfknows  
    • Image

    • I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS SINCE 1979 by 1984 moved out of the country.
      TELL AMERICANS THEY ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY NAZI JEWS LIKE BLOOMBERG GIVE JEWS LIKE ME BAD RAP; TAKE BOOMBERG IN THE BOXING GO A ROUND WITH ME! A REAL JEW; NOT THESE CREEPS LIKE BLOOMBERG; SHAME I SAY SHAME! EUGENICS STARTED IN USA SHIPPED TO GERMANY 1927.

    • 1 year ago
  • theREALpeacekitten
  • Brecia_Bloom
  • ecoalex
    • +1
      ecoalex  

    • This was obvious after Obama won the election.They couldn't force another election fraud,so Obama was allowed to "win".The Obama surrounded himself with Goldman Sachs cronies;Geitner,Summers,Rubin,,and allowed his policy to be driven by the same crooks that caused the depression.He even allowed cass Sunstein to be in an office above EPA head Sheila Jackson,Sunstein made sure all efforts by Jackson to reverse bush's trashing of the EPA was thwarted.Obama allowed this.The secret meetings with big pharma,the health ins cos,the examples are endless.Obviously the corporations, Wall st the banksters own the government.

    • 1 year ago
  • NiceN
    • +1
      NiceN  

    • Amazing what paper monetary value with a negative balance can achieve with the power of greed and false entitlement. Can we officially stop calling the US democracy a government and start referring to it as a corporation? I don't like lying to myself.

    • 1 year ago
  • Toughth
    • 0
      Toughth  

    • In the late 1700s Andrew Jackson vetoed the creation of the second bank Of the United States saying it would be controled by the wealthy. Instead he suported the smaller state banks. He knew that to big to fail would hurt the many and benifit the few.

    • 1 year ago
  • sawwow
  • nardo1224
  • VoyagerFilms
  • Steamed_N_More
    • +4
      Steamed_N_More  

    • Just gotta say, isn't the viral effects of new technology great? These issues have plagued us from the beginning. Now, everyone can get on the same page in a day, compared to 225 years ago. This posting is about an old issue. The age of information transparency is shining light under many rocks. The inhabitants under there are doing preservation and damage control as we watch. Good post!

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +4
      PressCore  
    • Steamed_N_More:

      Haliluja for that ! I started out in entry level Journalism when the amber
      waves of grain were standard issue on the reverse side of the Lincoln
      cents. And one couldn't go a day without seeing steel cents to remind
      them they're the last of the post WW2 generation before the 1950s began.
      Thanks to the internet's genuine resurrection of the Free Press into the
      digital age, we can finaly realize what Lincoln meant with: " You can fool
      all of the people sometimes, perhaps even most of them, most of the
      time, but you can't fool all of them forever " The transparency of truth
      is finaly catching up with humans in the 21st century. If humans exist
      in the 22nd century they surely won't be the same. ( I only wish Lesli
      Nielson were still around for a comeback on " surely " ) Heh.

    • 1 year ago
  • Ambill94
    • +2
      Ambill94  
    • PressCore:

      good words...though I am really concerned about how long we will have this "free press"...the ugliness that is our federal government seems hell bent on destroying this cyber haven because it is such a powerful threat to their truly evil operations...Geithner must go with Benanke right behind him and that's just the to do list for right after breakfast...

    • 1 year ago
  • JustZ
    • +1
      JustZ  
    • Ambill94:

      I'd say ANYONE in the administration, US Congress, and SCOTUS who we know have ties to Wall Street's dirty dozen... not only needs to go, they should most certainly be investigated, arrested, and IF found guilty... prosecuted to the absolute fullest extent of the law. They also lose all claims to any benefits and pensions.

    • 1 year ago
  • Ambill94
    • +3
      Ambill94  
    • JustZ:

      "They also lose all claims to any benefits and pensions." Absolutely agree on this...and members of Congress should get no retirement or insurance pkgs. when they leave office either, that's absurd.

    • 1 year ago
  • JustZ
    • +3
      JustZ  

    • Yet despite this horrendous revelation- hardly a ripple about any of this colossal corruption has been mentioned, much less EXPOSED, by our so-called major news networks!

      Mr. Smith's Jim Taylor would be so proud; apparently squelching the truth has never been easier for Wall Street crooks.

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +2
      PressCore  
    • JustZ:

      The " major news networks " as brainwashed people have called them
      knowing that others would immitate and copy that, are no more " news "
      networks merely by that pretense, than traveling snake oil pedelers were
      healers in the Old West merely because, they didn't have enforceable
      regulations as medical professionals do either. The TV networks are
      " infotainment " outlets. Their passive delivery method is too sublimating
      (hypnotic) to call them genuine news. News is something you have to
      actively read, not passively watch, to be informed about, to understand.
      Only conscious minds interacting with genuine news media ever learn
      anything they can understand because they're aswake enough to think
      about it. Otherwise it's only info programmed into their minds to automate
      them to accept anything as true w/o reasoning to see if it's disinformation
      or not. Print media, whether on paper or in hypertext, can deliver you
      news because you always have a stable source of visual reference to
      refer to in direct CONSCIOUS mind to mind contact .

      On TV they read from paper script or electronic TV teleprompter to mediate
      the passive delivery of info for mass mind control on the UNCONSCIOUS
      level. They no more research, verify & write genuine news than farmers
      shoveling cow manuer onto the back 40 can know what genuine news is
      precisely because they don't originate anything. Like I said, they're brain
      washed people who want you to copy them. And if that's what you want
      to do, hey, by all means... I'm only pointing out what's meant to be news
      from a psychological delivery method in abstract terms. I'm not telling you
      how to think or what to believe. Obviously TV Corporations have an
      agenda radicly different than Plato had. Plato never tried to sell you soap.

    • 1 year ago
  • JustZ
    • +2
      JustZ  
    • PressCore:

      I concur on all counts. But then I'm certain my sarcasm wasn't wasted on you mate. The surest way to control a people is to control the message; a.k.a. today's news in America. News stopped being journalism when CNN rose to power with 24 hours of 'news' from the gulf war.

    • 1 year ago
  • julia79
  • squarethecircle
    • +2
      squarethecircle  

    • how about electing people not politicians like Iceland did...we aren't given a choice. The elite's agenda is not going to change after the next election regardless of outcome. They have made sure of that and aren't worried one bit about that voting thing we hold so much faith in.

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +4
      PressCore  
    • squarethecircle:

      Of course the agenda of the .01 %, aka the oligarchs, isn't going to change.
      They're old money. Ie they ARE the status quo. To them, we all work for them.
      We simply don't get paid for it, rather get fleeced instead. When G people
      like Sen Durbin say: " The Bankers pretty much own everything in sight " you
      don't need a tree limb falling on you in a windstorm to understand he meant
      those who own the banks own everyone in sight too, ( though am unsure if
      the Senate has C span as the House does.) Grease for peace. The uberrich
      corrupt members of all, Government branchs with money " contributions "
      (Bribes) so that they can reward them for writing the laws permitting them to
      grease them in the first place. It's called Quid Pro Quo. They don't need to
      buy G people as if they were servants anymore. They've bought the system
      itself. So long as we live on the grid, we're all part of that system they own.
      They know that. The uberrich majority controlling stockholders in every major Corporation own the 5 major industries which all American taxpayers subsidize
      in the form of Corporate welfare. It would take a financial collapse, MILLIONS
      of irate Americans taking to the streets to back the OWS protest movement
      to change anything. They're still too relatively well off, frightened of the con
      sequences of standing up for their rights to act, at least for now..They don't
      understand the OWS protest movement is their vanguard, that all conscionable Americans should support them. As more & more forclosures put more & more
      people homeless, the OWS protest movement will grow steadily. Because
      of the internet there is Free Press Democracy in the USA. All it takes is a few
      whack jobs like McCain & Levin, those bought by Monsanto, those bought
      by Big OIl to propose more insults & injury disguised as laws to rankle all of us.

      It only took one angel of the Lord to roll back that stone. It'll take MILLIONS
      of Americans to roll back the one blocking our path to universal prosperity.
      All we've got now is universal disparity. Chalk that up to the dystopia we live in,
      the globalist puppets like Gingrich & Romney who advocate more " free trade "
      to send your job to the 3rd world, for more obscene profits to light their cigars
      with. When was the last time you heard any cheap hack polico talk of a " Living
      Wage law " ??? The uberrich have subverted Government into a business
      tool for so long Government's become a business. Maybe we need to elect
      people who have too much integrity to be bribed with " contributions" instead
      of politicians is right. We almost need to elect people who don't want to run
      for office to secure even indirect Democracy that works. What we realy need
      is the type of direct Democracy as the citizens of Switzerland have

    • 1 year ago
  • nikonwilly
    • +2
      nikonwilly  
    • squarethecircle:

      Your absolutely correct...they have insulated themselves from any harm and expect to continue on as usual. It's going to take a full out Revolution before anything in this Country changes for the common man.

    • 1 year ago
  • squarethecircle
  • squarethecircle
  • rossmick
    • 0
      rossmick  

    • OK, so what are WE going to do about it? Vote in Dems that will actually make the laws to fix this mess. If the people don't do this, no one will. We have only ourselves to blame if this does not get corrected ASAP.
      Most likely it will take throwing out the entrenched and connected and elect new officials with a fire in their gut to make this change. One would think that this would be the perfect campaign topic to use, but then again where are the people with a real desire to make a real change?

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +1
      PressCore  
    • rossmick:

      You realy don't know ? The pigs are assaulting them every day wherever
      they've become entrenched in the Occupy protest movement. It takes a
      lot of fire in their gut to warm them as we've gone from the end of Summer
      to the beginning of Winter, bud. They ARE outdoors, you know.

    • 1 year ago
  • artemis6
  • PressCore
    • +8
      PressCore  

    • Many don't have a clue that NYC used to be the original capitol
      of the USA, and the financial center of power before the original
      13 States changed it to a place where Maryland & Virginia ceded
      some land for a new U.S. District of Columbia. And the city of
      Washigton was constructed. When the English wrested controil
      of NYC from the Dutch, Wall st started booming. The Rothschilds
      owned the major banking houses in France, England, et al nations
      in Europe. In fact the senior Rothschild's dream was to send his
      5 sons to the 5 major European powers to establish his central
      banks & their fial currency there, which they did several hundred
      years ago. After the American Revolution, these financial interests
      were still seeking to control the U.S.Government by greasing them
      to enact the 1st and 2nd Corporate Banks of the U.S.(Government)
      Though the people of early America were too sharp to accept their
      Bankster fiat currency which was plagued with bank fraud,

      Andrew Jackson's exit speech from the White House in the 1830s
      is so electrifying, contemporary in its relevance, most would be
      astonished at how sharp his original 18 Million Americans were.
      But you know how the sheeple behave. The lessons of History
      don't interest them, so the USA is doomed to repeat it's mistakes.
      And so after the NYC Banksters' secret accord on Jeckyl Island
      off Georgia in 1910 culminated with them again greasing the
      Congress of 1912 to pass the UnConstitutional Federal Reserve
      Act of 1913, we had to go through 98 years of being fleeced
      by the Rothschild's Fed octapus, it's Goldman Sachs tentacles.
      They had to get so extreme in their bank fraud that it took them
      putting 8 Million Americans out of work for people to notice. To
      most even now, the 2008 financial meltdown was " so 3 years
      ago " they'll scratch their heads, hear of the pigs assaulting
      the OWS protesters, never see the connections, much less
      understand why Revelation 1217's blogs keep posting very
      relevant facts about how the USA is in financial quicksand. So
      long as we have FRS notes circulating instead of U.S.Treasury
      Notes, these globalist free trade Corporatists like Gingrich,
      Romney, rest of their puppet freak show shitbags bode for worse.

      The Banksters operate in secret, as many agencies of the U.S.
      Government do, which is why it's difficult to pry them apart. It's
      like they're joined at the hip. They control the ass media so you'll
      only hear disinformation, a genuine news blackout from those evil
      clowns. The Banksters' fiat currency is a worldwide Ponzi Scheme
      scam. I've reasearched it through the Internet, History channel for
      3 and 1/2 years now. The financial system is so convoluted and
      corrupt that it would take Dennis Kuninick's proposed N.E.E.D Act
      to reform it. Yet we never hear of anyone getting behind that. We
      only see the Punch & Judy show of a Super committee which has
      failed. A good thing realy, because it will take the Banksters' down
      grading their credit rating, the skyrocketing cost of credit, and
      hyperinflation to put MILLIONS of people inthe streets supporting
      the OWS movement.

      Soren Kirkegaard said::" Life can only be seen in hindsight, but
      must be lived going forward " So it will likely take the system
      collapsing before people wake up, restore honest dealings. Pray
      that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency in 2020, which
      is the only thing that's kept us all afloat. ( Otherwise we'd go from
      deflation to hyperinflation, riots & bloodshed, and martial law. Its
      so nuts that senile dangerous maniacs in the Government view
      people storing more than a weeks food supply as " terrorists " as
      if the food were automatic weapons & ammo & homemade fertilizer
      bombs. Meanwhile the Government itself is stockpiling food. I've
      verified that.) People keep lamenting the overprinting of currency,
      yet wonder why cash is in such short supply, when even the Fed
      admits that most of it's currency isn't even registered in the printing
      of ink on paper, but stored digitaly in a database. Duh.

      Want an example of how bad things REALY are ? The super
      complex bank financial instuments called " derivatives " are
      described by one of it's inventors as the " Manhatten Project of
      finance " They're a balloon meant to expand so as to convert
      the genuine wealth of Billions into the coffers of the Banksters
      by falsely eliminating all risk, which is a pipe dream. As they've
      been abusing the public to bail out their casino style gambling
      by greasing the Government into allowing them to Monopolize
      both the monentary system & the economy. The Bankster's
      " austerity measures " causing riots in France, England, Greece,
      likely about to in Italy have been attempted here by the Super
      committee aka the super dupers. They were created by the
      undue influence of the Banksters to implement the Bankster's
      will. The only thing they accomplished was being greased by
      a lot of Bankster Fed Corporate lube. People don't even under
      standthat the Rothschilds made their fortune by creating:
      " business development companies " Almost a century ago
      they greedily eyed the U.S. economy as their next conquest.

      To gain control of our economy through the Corporations the
      Fed was designed to fuel fiat currency into, they first had to
      gain control of our money supply by taking over our monentary
      system. Goldman Sachs insider trading ( amongst several other
      inverted pyramid scheme factors unregulated by the S.E.C.,
      F.D.I.C., Glass Steegal in the 1920s ) manipulated the Oct &
      Dec 1929 stock market collapse, hijacked 40% of the Treasury's
      Gold bullion coins. took them out of circulation, exported them
      to Rothschild's owned banks in France & Switzerland to escape
      the G melt down in 1934, when the Treasury realized that it was
      this shorting of the money supply by that was causing 35-40%
      unemployment, suicides, starvation, homelessness.) These BDCs
      are still paying the Rothschilds tribute like conquered countries paid
      the ancient Eqyptian pharohs, after hundreds of years, in perpetuity.
      That's how they got the capital to go into banking. They operate
      like the mafia, not John Molsen. Senator Franken is right to act to
      " get the money out of politics " But we need to restore the lawful
      Constitutional function of the Treasury to be able to accomplish
      that before the bilge punps fail permanently. The Banksters have
      always operated as if they were a Government within a Government.
      Look up Snookum's post on the B.I.C. in Switzerland sometime. It
      will open your eyes. They are to Switzerland as the Papal States
      are to Italy. They're so secret few have ever even heard of them.
      We've only heard of their I.M.F. and Fed central banks. Yet they
      have their own soverign immunity from criminal prosecution, their
      own police force, their own private security. The senior Rothschild
      whose nightmare started all this parasitism said: " Give me control
      of any nation's money supply, I can disregard laws & Government "
      Most don't have a clue these Bankster dynasties fomented both
      World Wars in the 20th century, are looking to start WW 3. They're
      behind the Owellian TV surveilance culture we're confronted with now.

    • 1 year ago
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