Posted on 11/20/2008 12:01:24 AM PST by bruinbirdman
Only a few short weeks ago, American Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made the whole World a promise. If only American taxpayers would ante up $700 billion, the US Treasury would buy up enough troubled mortgages to stem the soaring tide of home foreclosures and put the brakes on a rapidly accelerating financial melt down. Despite protests and out right catcalls from millions of average Americans (who are actually much smarter than they look), Congress took the bait and put them and generations of their children on the hook for nearly a trillion dollars.
Now, fast-forward to this morning, November 18, 2008: Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended their management of the bailout program on Capitol Hill, just one week after the administration officially abandoned its original rescue strategy of buying the troubled loans from financial institutions. Only people who don’t know Mr. Paulson, his long resume as a consummate Wall Street insider and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, or those without any understanding of what’s really going on in the World, are surprised.
As the financial collapse accelerates, the historic goal of governments in general and the Bush Administration in particular, is becoming ever more transparent: protect the interests of the moneyed men. There is no mention of this raw fact in the mainstream Media. Like bleating sheep, even the most respected and “left-leaning” News Organizations simply repeat the mindless montra that some how, the defaults of less than 5% of residential mortgages in the United States are responsible for the global melt down. Few understand the complex debt instruments and credit swaps that lay at the heart of what amounts to secret, unregulated international racketeering of the rich and powerful. Thousands of Hedge Funds spent the last eight years turning international equity markets and banks into wild, anything goes casinos. And guess what happened? Rich people lost money!
Now THAT is a completely unacceptable outcome to any “free market” that the Bush Administration understands. So Paulson and his thugs swindled nearly a trillion dollars out of a scared and gullible Congress with lies and threats and instead of doing what they promised, doled out the cash among the world’s largest banks. The banks didn’t lend anyone any money really, but immediately paid huge dividends to wealthy shareholders and immense bonuses to already over paid executives.
As if that wasn’t enough to finally declare the class war, when General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, who employ millions of blue collar working stiffs had the gall to ask the same Government for even a paltry $25 billion in loans, Bush, Paulson and all the Republicans in Congress suddenly turned back into Capitalists again. All the complex financial double talk in the world can’t hide the basic fact that global Capitalism as practiced over the last eight years has failed. Rich people all over the world lost trillions of dollars and are now trying desperately to use governments to transfer that loss onto the backs of billions of poor and working class people. In its final days, the Bush Administration is trying to hold open the vault doors as wide as possible while the real pirates escape with as much bullion as they can. My guess is that right from the podium of Obama’s inauguration, George Bush and Dick Cheney will board a non-stop flight to Riyadh.
The true genius of Democracy is that where it has had time to establish itself and mature, it affords a means to resolve precisely these kinds of situations without violent upheavals or times of troubles. However, in this event, the Bush Administration, even in its waning days of power, is intensifying its rapacious eight-year war on the world’s poor and middle classes. Like an economic drunk driver, such behavior now represents a real and present danger to places like Russia and Latin America, places without deep democratic traditions or institutions and where such instability can produce unintended and unpredictable consequences.
I remember back in October, laughing grimly when former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a long time advocate of the so-called “Invisible Hand Theory” of Capitalism testified before Congress. He admitted “errors” and that he was in “a state of shocked disbelief” about the breakdown in the ability of banks to regulate themselves. Now, as 2008, the Bush Administration and its peculiar brand of regressive Capitalism fail, I’m remembering Greenspan’s words and perceiving that the Invisible Hand is trying to give the whole wide World a final, invisible finger.
Now THAT is a completely unacceptable outcome to any “free market” that the Bush Administration understands. So Paulson and his thugs swindled nearly a trillion dollars out of a scared and gullible Congress with lies and threats
It’s Bush’s fault, plain and simple! After all, Congress is scared and gullible! They’re not elected to understand how it’s supposed to work. BS!
What a waste of space.
Is this anything like Obama’s invisible ‘finger’ he displayed toward Hillary and McCain?
That's kinda funny considering that the Federal Reserve and the Invisible Hand are philosophical opposites.
hmmmmmm. What to make of the comments of this post-KGB disinformation apparatus...........
anyone remember the conditions republicans put into the $700b bill. It doesn’t sound like paulson implemented it e.g bank insurance
Congress scared and gullible...BS! They are in it up to their eyeballs. The bailout was for them! They were due to lose their shirts. What a scam!!
It doesn't sound like Mr. Greenspan is very bright, does it?
Did you mean ‘apparatchik’?
Quite the contrary. Greenspan is a Keynesian. He is a long time advocate and practitioner or the “Manipulative Hand Theory” of Quasi-Capitalism/Quasi-Socialism. Greenspan did a lot of damage and he is the one who set the stage for the current debacle. Bernanke should have been more aggressive in unwinding Greenspan’s policies when he took over, but it may have been too late at that point.
That’s PRECISELY the invisible finger I saw displayed.
I’ve seen it displayed often by each of the three branches of government.
So much so, I take it as the natural salute of the Government to the People!
The DemocRATs see the bailout funds as a resource to pay back any organization that contributed to the Obama election. The latest is the United Auto Workers. Next thing you know, they’ll be bailing out (paying back) all of the failing MSM outlets. I think the Washington Post need a bailout for the 900 cancellations after election day.
It's precisely the effort to convert the United States into a "democracy" that is the problem. The Founding Fathers understood this quite well. The phrase goes something like this "..democracies survive until the people find they can vote themselves payments from the public treasuries...".
Which is PRECISELY why they established a REPUBLIC.
......protect the interests of the moneyed men......
This is the key disinformation in the piece. The effort is to preserve the moneyed institutions and corporations that form the structural support for the American economy. That effort is a worthy goal in spite of the loud whining and catcalls of the wishiwasrich masses who have failed to educate themselves to the point they can suceed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.