The Comedian's "Economic Holocaust" ping list...
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/02/2010 9:54:58 AM PST by thouworm
Rivers of ink have been spilt on the crisis that gripped the world’s financial system between 2007 and 2009.
Wednesday’s huge release of data by the US Federal Reserve chronicles a similar story, but in numbers. A lot of numbers.
The Fed’s release, prompted by an order from Congress, details more than 21,000 transactions that enabled US authorities to dole out $3,300 bn to banks and companies in the worst downturn since the Great Depression. The picture is one of a global financial system in desperate need of short-term funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
GOP investigations needed ASAP!
Listening to Rush right now discussing this whole nightmare. It’s Smoke and Mirrors on a mammoth scale across the globe...
What I wonder is if ANYONE, anywhere really understands what’s been done...
“What I wonder is if ANYONE, anywhere really understands what’s been done...”
NO! and, furthermore, this stench falls right in line with the motto of the BHO adm: PAY TO PLAY!
First of all, the FED is just getting around to releasing docs they fought tooth and nail to suppress.
Secondly, they are still WITHHOLDING BAILOUT DOCS -— see bloomberg.com -— right-hand column, under most popular stories right now. I do not think FR is permitted to even link to a Bloomberg story [are we?], but the headline is:
Fed Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans
~~~~~~~~
SE MOM: Did you carch which article Rush was reading from?
I’m listening too.....it’s disgusting....
I know we can’t post Bloomberg but you can post a link within a thread (at least I think so- I’ve done it lots of times)
Not sure but I THINK he was reading WSJ and WaPo..
It is payola on a scale beyond comprehension.
It isn’t just a matter of what’s been done. It is also a matter of why it has been done. Back in 2004 I began worrying about the kind of greed that was pushing CEO’s of top corporations to manipulate their salaries up to 400 to 1,000 TIMES that of their low level employees. Back in Reagan’s day they seemed quite prosperous with only a 40 times differential. When Grasso left the New York Stock Exchange he tried to take the entire profit of the Exchange for himself. After he was forced to give some of it back he still left with $140 million. Then there was Enron. And the entire meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 killed Countrywide Financial whose “smart” CEO lowered his 2007 of $142 million to a mere $103 million, Lehman Brothers CEO raised his salary from $52 million to $72 million in the same period. No wonder NO ONE wanted to bail them out. So John McCain was right when he said GREED was the issue.
So my question is, what is wrong with our society, or our methods of child rearing and education that such monumental greed is developed in our top business leaders? Some of them actually used to want to create something valuable and useful.
I think Enron was the sobering moment for me- or the one I learned the most from. I began to understand that the likes of Jeff Skilling really and TRULY see themselves as immune from the rules of the road. They were honestly surprised when they were held accountable.
What’s wrong with our society is a pretty complicated question- but in terms of this topic I don’t think it’s so much as what’s WRONG -since greed is as old as humanity and it’s not going anywhere. What seems to be happening is an increasing ease of getting away with robbery. As long as the government/Fed/and business sleep together- we will continue to see this.
It’s truly, truly mindboggling, isn’t it?
Rush is struggling to interpret and explain this - he’s dumbfounded. That’s not a slight to Rush- it simply shows how complicated and HUGE this is..
This big, powerful government was sold to us as the only way to stop and prevent this sort of high level skulduggery in high places. Turns out that once you create such an aggregation of raw power as that government is, it attracts, and is eventually composed of, the very scoundrels it was supposed to suppress. Soon they're working both ends of the whipsaw, and the situation is as bad as before, only it costs several times as much now.
Free competition would help to suppress this stuff, but that is not allowed in the current regulatory regime, probably for that very reason. As long as these CEO's are the only game in town, and they have plenty of steak to feed the watchdogs, they have no reason to stop.
Fed reveals global extent of its backing
European banks took big slice of Fed aid
Fed ID's companies that used crisis aid programs
Fed Opens Books, Revealing European Megabanks Were Biggest Beneficiaries (Details you should see)
** CHECK THE DRUDGE REPORT FOLKS **
UK banks borrowed more than £640bn ($1 trillion) from US Federal Reserve
US Ready to Back Bigger EU Stability Fund: Official(US Bailing Europe Out)
UK banks borrowed more than £640bn ($1 trillion) from US Federal Reserve
Fed Papers Show Breadth of Emergency Measures [bailouts]
Fed Papers Show Breadth of Emergency Measures[Federal Reserve]
Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms
Whack a Mole (Fed bailout post)
Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms
Fed Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans
This guy is sooo off the mark.
Ivy-league.
Free markets, capitalism, true competition in the marketplace...very little of it left anywhere. At least on major scale- small businesses maybe- that aren’t corporate franchises.
What I wonder is if ANYONE, anywhere really understands what’s been done...
I bet Mr.Madoff gets it.
Certainly not Rush's Duke Professor! The idea the the Federal Reserve is independent is laughable. It says United States of America all over their notes, the signatures of the US Treasurer, and the US Secretary of the Treasury are on each note; and anyone doing any business in the US is required by US Law to accept them as payment for any debt.
Rush even went through a whole litany of things the Fed did to protect the Political Class. Yeah, that's real Independence! Does the Fed ever do anything that like say NO to the Political Class?
The fact is that the supposed Independence of the Fed is a legal fiction that enables the Federal government to print money.
ML/NJ
Fed reveals global extent of its backing [Nearly Five Trillion]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2636358/posts
[Note thouworm’s link list, post 13.]
[Thank you, thouworm.]
And the goal of the ruling class is to get all of those small businesses properly caged so that they are no competitive threat. This is the real (and intended) effect of government regulation.
Don't be fooled into thinking that gubmint rules about the fat content of your Post Toasties are there to keep you healthy. As long as you think so, you don't realize that their true effect is to keep you from going out in your garage and making a better product. After all, supposing you did, think of all the labeling requirements and certifications you would have to get to sell it. And if you don't get them and try to sell it anyway, the FDA would come in with guns drawn and shut you down.
Compare that to the America of a hundred years ago, the America where most of the big present-day food companies got their start in garages and kitchens. It's not for nothing that the big industries support and lobby for excessive government regulation. They can absorb the cost of compliance as a business expense, and they also have a Siamese twin relationship with the regulatory bureaucracy — it's the same crowd staffing both. In effect, they get to write the rules which prevent new competition from arising in the same way as they did themselves.
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