A.I.G. Paid Fellow Wall Street Casino High Rollers With U.S. Bailout Funds
Big foreign banks also received large sums from the rescue, including Société Générale of France and Deutsche Bank of Germany, which each received nearly $12 billion; Barclays of Britain ($8.5 billion); and UBS of Switzerland ($5 billion).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/business/16rescue.html?scp=3&sq=aig%20gold...
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So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream.
People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.
The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers. - MATT TAIBBI
The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
Posted Mar 19, 2009 12:49 PM
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print
Still the plot thickens...
Was Eliot Spitzer Taken Out Because He Was Going to Bust AIG?
http://current.com/items/89901630/was_eliot_spitzer_taken_out_because_he_was_goi...
Stay tuned...
"It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition to stand up for it." - A. A. Hodge
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- WhiteNoise
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What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar "bank bailouts", which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America.
This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty.
The criminalization of the global financial system, characterized by a "Shadow Banking" network has resulted in the centralization of bank power and an unprecedented concentration of private wealth.
"Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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Unfortunately many people dont have the want or need to look into the long term issues we face here. They would rather still listen to the same pundits that gave them the advice that put us in this situation, and as long as they are still getting their weekly paycheck they could care less what is happening to others.
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- regjoeschmo
- 8 months ago
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...& to add insult to injury !
AIG Sues for Return of $300M in Taxes
The suit effectively means AIG is using US taxpayer money to sue its majority owner, the US taxpayer.
As AIG faces the loss of its bonuses, it’s quietly filed a lawsuit to recoup more than $300 million in what it says are overpaid taxes. The company says it overpaid the government in charges for using offshore tax havens. The suit effectively means AIG is using US taxpayer money to sue its majority owner, the US taxpayer. The government owns an 80 percent stake in AIG following its $170 billion bailout.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/business/20aig.html?_r=1Probe: Bailout Firms Owe $220M in Taxes
In other bailout news, a congressional probe has found the top thirteen firms to receive bailout money owe more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes. Congress member John Lewis of Georgia, the chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, says two of the companies owe more than $100 million apiece. The review only looked at the top twenty-three bailout recipients, leaving open the possibility of further owed taxes from nearly 450 remaining companies. The inspector general overseeing the federal bailout says he will investigate whether recipient companies misled Congress on their tax obligations. http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/all_headlines/112463.php
"The country is headed toward a single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and monied corporations, and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few will be ruling and riding over the plundered plowman and the beggar" - Thomas Jefferson
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
~Thomas Jefferson
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This is so depressing... but there is no solution in avoiding any problem...
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- PlatoTacius
- 8 months ago
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Elliott Spitzer...the Sampson of the free world, eh? Sure, the Philistines took Sampson down because he was a threat to their enterprise, but on some level, Sampson took himself down...WTF...Delilah is as Delilah does, and were Elliott in possession of any real integrity, he wouldn't have been caught in the clutches of a prostitute.
I realize this may not be a very popular thing to say, but I suspect that our real denial is in thinking that we "allowed" this to happen. Did we really? Exactly what is it we could have done to stop it as it was all taking place? Turned off our TVs perhaps?
We need to think our way out of this, and there is no imminent solution. Whatever we do to undo the madness is going to be a cumulative process. There are no instant solutions. It took time to create this mess, and it will take time to find our way out. One of the things that is disturbing to me is the fact that our Federal government has been gearing up for crushing protest for a long, long time. A lot of money has gone into surveillance and containment. At what point do you turn the guns on the citizens who are financing your empire with their labor? When their labor is no longer necessary for maintaining and expanding the empire?
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- Incredulous
- 8 months ago
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Well at least Spitzer got fucked with his own money ;)
Don't we wish bankers had the same decency ?Spitzer for Treasury?
posted by KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL on 03/22/2009 @ 2:11pm
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/420275/spitzer_for_treasury?rel=emailNationWe deserve a Treasury Secretary who hasn't been a player in Wall Street's lifestyle of bonuses and legalized corruption. Nobel Prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman would be strong choices; yet they are increasingly valuable as watchdogs and constructive critics working outside the Administration. I've also thought that Obama would be smart to promote former Economic Policy Institute Fellow Jared Bernstein, who is currently serving as Biden's chief economic adviser.
Then there's a novel idea. Why not bring in the man who took on Wall Street and AIG long before it was trendy? Eliot Spitzer. Call me crazy. But he foresaw the bubbles and disasters resulting from deregulatory frenzy and the financial service industry's creation of toxic credit default swaps and derivatives. As the Sherriff of Wall Street, Spitzer launched investigations and lawsuits deploying the creative cudgel of the previously-obscure 1921 Martin Act. Yes, he acted miserably toward his wife and family and he should pay the price for that. But some believe Spitzer was taken down by certain "masters of the universe" seeking vengeance for his aggressive policing of their financial fraud and corruption.
Spitzer took on Wall Street's metastasizing corruption before the meltdown. He defended consumers' and taxpayers' rights. He speaks with passion and clarity about what went wrong and what needs to be done to restore integrity to our system. He is chastened by personal scandal, yet untouched by complicity in Wall Street's public scandals which have obliterated peoples' savings and devastated our country.
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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Yes, the bottom line is, there are those who profess to embrace truth and honesty, as pillars of society, with dignity and honor, but instead are embroiled in the undeniably unexceptable and unforgivable blatant betrayal of the public trust... Eliot Spitzer was just trying to do something about it and got caught with his pants down or set-up, how ever you look at it...
I'd still like to have the guy take up where he left off...
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- PlatoTacius
- 8 months ago
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Many view the massive losses at AIG as the result of corporate greed combined with lax government oversight and regulation. But in a new article in Rolling Stone Magazine that takes an in-depth look at the AIG story, journalist Matt Taibbi writes the financial crisis and the bailout that followed, quote, “cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.”
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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Taibbi goes on to write, “The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron—a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.”
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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The key phrase, " both sides were absolutely complicit in passing this legislation..." and, like you say, "leaving an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders..." (better known as taxpayers)... drowning now in a sea of blind consumption...
Taibbi really sums it up well...
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- PlatoTacius
- 8 months ago
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In the age old magician tradition, we are being showned the left hand, while the right one does the trick indeed !
The Real AIG Conspiracy
- by Prof. Michael Hudson - 2009-03-18
The $135 million in AIG bonuses is less than 0.1% of the $183 BILLION that the U.S. Treasury gave to AIG as a "pass-through" to its counterparties.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12784A Scary Corporate Coup Is Under Way -- We've Got to Stop It By William Greider, TheNation.com. Posted March 31, 2009.http://www.alternet.org/democracy/134217/a_scary_corporate_coup_is_under_way_--_...'ve_got_to_stop_it/
If Wall Street gets its way, Washington will pass new "reforms" that consolidate power and ratify a corporate state.
"The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so." : Josh Billings - [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (1818-1885) American humorist and lecturer
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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Oh BTW...
Merrill Lynch Bonuses Were 22 Times the Size Of AIG's
Merrill Lynch's bonuses to execs totaled $3.6 billion, one-third of the money they received from the feds' TARP bailout.
By Megan Slack, Huffington Post. Posted March 31, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/134235/merrill_lynch_bonuses_were_22_times_the...'s/-
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- WhiteNoise
- 8 months ago
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