RollingStone.com / By Matt Taibbi
comments_imageCOMMENTS: 257

The Big Takeover: How Wall Street Insiders are Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution

The global economic crisis isn't about money -- it's about power.
March 23, 2009  |  
 
 
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This is part of a special AlterNet series on Obama's latest plans for a rescue of the bankers and Wall Street's toxic assets.
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Published by Rolling Stone

It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history - some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

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. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck - bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now," he said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too." In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down."

Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather. He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market.

Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed money all over town - and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

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.


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Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.
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After this article brought back those memories and made my blood boil, I can't help but wonder,
[Report this comment]
Posted by: JenniferBedingfield on Mar 23, 2009 12:35 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
what the hell Obama and his lame brains are trying to fool us into telling us to shut up and "sacrifice" when it's their job to undo their own damage that they and their pols created to begin with. I am also not surprised that Wall $treet is misusing that bailout money. Congress knew it all along but refused to come clean about it and it pisses me off. Sadly, our stupid electorate will go back to the "greed is good" mantra and plenty will go back to playing daytrading as usual and then again, we'll end up with a mess far worse and still refuse to understand what hit us all !

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» OMG Posted by: Rolomax
» RE: OMG Posted by: CarlaWaters
» RE: OMG Posted by: pelican beak
» RE: OMG Posted by: WYGunston
» RE: OMG Posted by: pelican beak
» RE: OMG Posted by: carsoncitygal
» RE: OMG Posted by: pelican beak
» no your stupid Posted by: MobileSucks
» RE: no your stupid Posted by: Rolomax

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AIG is a distraction. Goldman Sachs
[Report this comment]
Posted by: weathered on Mar 23, 2009 1:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is satan's investment banker.

Lets bring Eliot Spitzer back in from the cold and have him work w/Andrew Cuomo to expand the scope of this fraud. Engaging Prosecutors in Switzerland/Israel(if they even have one)is essential to evoke RICO.

Unless we inflict pain and attach all assests;real, collateral, 3rd. party and those parked in the 2 most secretive banking franchises Israel/Swtlnd. we'll see the real criminals continue to exploit and smash any confidence or goodfaith going forward.

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you got that right!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Riposter on Mar 23, 2009 1:36 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Couldn't have said it better.

Here's the link to an excellent report called "Sold Out", which reviews how the banksters' thousands of lobbyists and their minions in Washington
created the mess, along with rolling commentary on recent events at a new site called Wall Street Watch.

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you got that right!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Riposter on Mar 23, 2009 1:37 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Couldn't have said it better.

BTW, an excellent report called "Sold Out", reviews how the banksters' thousands of lobbyists and their minions in Washington created the mess. It's posted at a new site called Wall Street Watch.

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Bought and Paid For
[Report this comment]
Posted by: DrBrian on Mar 23, 2009 1:51 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Let's not forget that Obama's biggest campaign donors were these very people. That's why he chose the team he did, and why he's supporting the policies he is.

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» Obama's Moral Hazard Posted by: DrBrian

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Receivership NOT bailout!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: cplot on Mar 23, 2009 2:13 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
These banks and AIG should be in receivership. They shouldn't be bailed out. Their liabilities should be prioritized. For example, the naked credit default swaps – those that are pure gambling – shouldn't be covered until all the non-naked (legitimate insurance policies) CDSs have all been covered.

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Fiat seignorage money is taxpayer money
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Posted by: cplot on Mar 23, 2009 2:24 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Matt Taibbi writes:

“Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole.”

This is false. Fiat money creation rightfully belongs to the US treasury by the dictates of the US constitution. However, since we have allowed the Federal Reserve to usurp that right, the trillions of dollars created by the Fed for the benefit of its member banks are trillions of dollars that will now need to be acquired through other means such as borrowing or taxation. There is therefore a dollar-for-dollar cost to taxpayers in allowing the Fed to usurp these seignorage benefits.

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This is a significant article.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: and_abottleofrum on Mar 23, 2009 2:28 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's great that Mr. Taibbi is shining a spotlight on these new channels, mentioned in the quotation below, for funneling money to the financial industry. This matter deserves a lot more coverage and popular scrutiny.

the Fed had simply stopped using relatively transparent devices like repurchase agreements to pump its money into the hands of private companies. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with names you've never heard of. There is the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF). For good measure, there's also something called a Money Market Investor Funding Facility, plus three facilities called Maiden Lane I, II and III to aid bailout recipients like Bear Stearns and AIG.

While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments). Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy.

No one knows who's getting that money or exactly how much of it is disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America's credit rating. Moreover, no one can really be sure if these new institutions are even temporary at all - or whether they are being set up as permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible lenders.

This is very disconcerting stuff.

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It's looking more and more like the financial industry, and its bootlickers
[Report this comment]
Posted by: and_abottleofrum on Mar 23, 2009 2:46 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
at the Federal Reserve and in the Treasury Department, will control this country's financial future. The numbers they're dealing with in just the last few months dwarf what Congress is empowered to allocate in a year.

Congress is of course the most democratic branch of the federal government, and it appears it's getting squeezed out of the biggest financial decisions. I am sure financial companies love having non-elected appointees in government decide how much money they can get.

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» Good idea Posted by: pfgetty
» Your good idea is BS Posted by: pfgetty
» RE: Your good idea is BS Posted by: brunowe

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Financial mumbo jumbo
[Report this comment]
Posted by: cplot on Mar 23, 2009 3:51 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I agree that the financial industry hides behind their jargon in order to intimidate regulators and the public and claim they are experts and everything should be left up to them. However, that also means they're making the situation more complicated than it really is. Basically we have four things intermingled at AIG that probably should have never been intermingled: 1) traditional securities such as equity (e.g., stocks) and credit/debt (bonds, mortgages, treasuries) instruments; 2) annuities and other life insurance policies; 3) covered derivatives where the derivative holder also holds an underlying asset the owner is insuring; 4) naked derivatives where the sole purpose was to gamble and perhaps even bilk taxpayers when the clear real estate bubble collapsed.

These each require different solutions all under the umbrella of receivership. The annuities and life insurance policies should be covered first. Most of the remaining focus should be on the underlying assets. Renegotiate the terms of mortgages and other debt instruments (including principal and interest) to allow homeowners to remain in their homes and still repay their debts. This focus on underlying assets will allow the derivatives to largely take care of themselves. The only place taxpayer money should even be considered is in possibly covering these derivative / insurance liabilities where the mortgage is renegotiated and the derivative owner has been guaranteed by AIG to receive full payment even in that event. Its an open public policy question whether even something like that should be covered.

For the naked derivatives, the clear answer is that we should not cover those. This is gambling pure and simple. The cost of not covering these assets is that AIG and others like them may have trouble fostering such gambling in the future. That's a win then that costs no taxpayer money. Discouraging this type of “investment” should be done.

Like short selling these naked derivatives provide no benefit to markets. The typical answer offered by the financial industry retreats entirely into jargon and hand-waving to claim that you simply don't understand the benefits. For example, the claim is often made that short selling allows information that has not yet been released to the public to be reflected in the asset's price: or in other words it facilitates insider trading. There the use of jargon is clear, they want to get rich and regulation gets in the way of that (fuck it if they're getting rich provides no benefit for smoothly operating markets which these capitalist claim to hold so dear).

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» RE: Financial mumbo jumbo Posted by: crazy carlos

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Good article
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Rolomax on Mar 23, 2009 5:16 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's a lot to ponder.

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Amazing, spot-on article that scares the shit out of me
[Report this comment]
Posted by: peterjkraus on Mar 23, 2009 6:00 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
He's abolutely right ...... for the few years he has been writing for them, Matt Taibbi alone was worth the subscription price. Fearlessly, he rolls up the current financial mess, long in the making, and points to the criminals. And he knows what he's doing: Matt wrote for a Moscow-based English-language newspaper while living in the post-USSR. He, if anyone, knows how white collar criminals think and act, with or without government collusion. Among all the articles coursing around, this one is it, the Mother of all Scamreviews.

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"Government by Bumper Sticker"
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Posted by: Lilly on Mar 23, 2009 6:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When issues are complex (and God knows our current economic situation would challenge any honest economics professor) politicians are guaranteed to boil complex ideas down into slogans and then sell the slogans to the people. Republicans have historically been better at this than Democrats (remember Palin turning a crowd by shouting "Drill, Baby, Drill"?). And when government by bumpersticker starts, issues are further reduced by the generous application of hysterical rumors, lies, and personal attacks. Here are a few bits from yesterday's townhall.com (conservative website that pairs columnists with posters): "Acorn Brownshirts Attacking Citizens!"; "Congress Also Got Huge Bonuses!"; "Obama Is A Sociopath!". Obama's actual statement that he recommends increased oversight of Wall Street compensation was reduced to "Obama will regulate salaries for all companies"; this morning that's been followed with a lead article cleverly implying that Obama will confiscate private property, a message not missed by the stupidest poster. And people who can't write an English sentence, who brag that they don't read newspapers ("too liberal"), and who get all their information from talk radio and FOX, are very expert at picking up on every inflammatory cue that's thrown out there. I doubt the Obama government understands the incendiary potential. Unless Obama & People get on top of this, by 2012 we will have
The Republican Revolution, Act III (I having been Reagan and II having been GWB; III will bring the end of this nation).

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chicken little
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Posted by: SeattlePackedSnowandCollidedCars on Mar 23, 2009 6:24 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
yea i said it. Matt needs to chill till the next episode, this is what he and many others voted for.

The grown up will be back in Washington come 2010/2012

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» RE: chicken little Posted by: JSquercia

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Sorry, Matt Taibbi, how can we believe anything you write? . . .
[Report this comment]
Posted by: dustdevil on Mar 23, 2009 6:30 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
when you have used your pulphit to help cover up the greatest crime in US history?

You have repeatedly produced articles attempting to debunk 9/11 truth theories.

You even debated David Ray Griffin in a series of articles on this website. He kicked your ass so bad you were driven to complain that he made you appear to be an idiot.

I will not waste my time reading long-winded articles by some hack who can't tell the difference between exploding buildings and buildings that collapse.

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» YES Posted by: leafsong1
» You miss the point Posted by: leafsong1
» RE: You miss the point Posted by: dustdevil
» Peace, TreeTopper Posted by: 2dogarage

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Finally, Somebody Gets It
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Eddie K. on Mar 23, 2009 6:31 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Great piece by Taibbi.

Whether or not the Vampire Financial Class(VFC for short), international in scope, cashed in from the worldwide effects of 9/11(and of course they did to the tune of trillions of $$$, planned or not), they clearly saw the GWB Administration as the best chance ever to create a permanent financial Overworld., answerable to no national government nor to any international court. I think much of what seems confusing or incompetent under Bush/Cheney can be explained by this ultimate goal.

But through genuine political incompetence, beginning in ’06 and certainly after the Democratic win that year, the window began to close. The USA was(or soon would be) moving again toward a less insane “top-down” political culture, and the Obama Phenomenon(leaving aside his willingness to take this on) created a “now or never” atmosphere.

So it was now. Maybe in 2109, we(okay, our grandchildren) will be able to see clearly what the machinations were, but I think two things happened: 1)an internal mob war within the VFC; and 2) an attempt to “acquire” the US government and other governments of the West through classic loanshark tactics, simply stated as “pay up or die”.

The mob war is clear. As Chomsky so often writes, one understands the reasons for a war only after it is over, when one looks at who won and who lost. If we look at Goldman Sachs as the Corleone Family(with Robert Ruben as the Godfather, and Summers/Paulson/Geithner as the three sons[yes, definitely Geithner as Fredo], and if we look at Lehman(Goldman’s blood enemy for decades) & Bear Stearns as the Barzini & Tatallia Families, then clarity emerges. After all, why bale out AIG the same week you let Lehman die? Why funnel 13 billion dollars through AIG to Goldman and zero for Lehman? Wasn’t AIG also on the hook for Lehman debts? What happened to those creditors? One thing that is not clear as of yet is what specific parts of the Overworld triumphed with Goldman/AIG? (Eliot Spitzer probably knows this. His book should really be something.)

The second part Obama, whether or not he can(or intends) to do anything about it, clearly does get it. During his OC town hall, he perfectly described AIG in this way:

“It’s like they've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger, you don't want them to blow up, but you've got to ease them off the trigger."

The bomb, of course, being the economic welfare of the people of the West. (And I really do think, for all his savoir faire, that Obama[much like JFK] was and remains stunned by exactly where real power lies.) And the best tactic the Overworld had – reversing the normal desire to remain in the shadows – was to reveal its malignancy. As cancer works – where malignant tissue and cells takeover and become indistinguishable from healthy cells --, the VFC revealed that there is now no difference between its health and the health of the Western world. Worse, they revealed that the health of the world is completely dependent on the health of the Overworld.

Worse yet will be the second act of the nightmare. In what can only be described as magnificent and elegant brilliance, the saving of the Vampires will accomplish something hoped for by the overclass for at least 200 years: the permanent crippling of all major Western governments to finance anything other than the preservation of the VFC and the financing of the military whose sole function is to protect the Overworld.

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» RE: Finally, Somebody Gets It Posted by: Sister_Lauren

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Taibbi for Treasury Secretary!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: littlepitcher on Mar 23, 2009 7:24 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Superb translation of a difficult subject into totally understandable
language. Stephen King couldn't have written a story this nightmarish.

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Fantastic Article
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Gravitas on Mar 23, 2009 7:26 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is a fantastic article. As an educator, I really appreciate the way he is able to break it down for the average person. In so many other articles, the facts are so obscured it makes one wonder. Do they not want the public to understand, or do they not fully understand it themselves? Or both. And any rate, Taibbi has a gift.

This article should be disseminated as much as possible. I am creative in the way I am spreading it. I link it in MSM bulletin boards. Yesterday the Trib ran a lame article on Blago's hair and why the bald author was jealous. Perfect opportunity to ask why above excellent article being ignored by MSM and we have this fluff piece? Link. Bald men, knowledge is sexier then hair, READ!

Gee, what would our country be like if we had real journalists like Taibbi reporting what we need to know instead of those glamorized puppets mouthing what corporate America wants us to hear? A democracy?

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PULL THEIR CHARTERS! PULL THEIR CHARTERS!
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Posted by: Koondog on Mar 23, 2009 8:08 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
None of these corporate Frankenstein's monsters could threaten anyone if their charters were legally revoked. That act is the stake through the heart of the vampire and dissolves the corporation. That is the only threat these people will listen to. It's the gun to their heads they apparently need to be kept in line. Check out www.poclad.org. The courts give death sentences to small corporations that act badly, but never a truly damaging one like AIG or Goldman. Or Eli Lilly. Or Exxon Mobil. Or ... or ... or. Spreading the word that there is something truly effective that can be done to rein in corporate abuses is the actual "change we can believe in." Spread the word.

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planned all along
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Posted by: warrior woman on Mar 23, 2009 8:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's been planned all along. Sounds crazy or inconceivable, but it has been planned all along.

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Would Movement Please...
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Posted by: EncinoM on Mar 23, 2009 8:36 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
STFU.

This has nothing to do with 9/11 or the lies and misinformation that Griffin & Co. have filled your tiny brains with.

This is a serious discussion about the financial health of a nation, not some fantasy about shadow governments, if you want that go to rense.com or infowars.com.

STOP TROLLING AROUND HERE.

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» Really? How about... Posted by: LeftWright
» More BS, LeftWright? Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: EncinoM... Posted by: Sister_Lauren
» RE: ncinoM... Posted by: EncinoM
» Wonder where you got them FAX? Posted by: 2dogarage
» Straw man. Posted by: GuitarBill
» Adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Lunatic Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: Would Movement Please... Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: Would Movement Please... Posted by: EncinoM

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» RE: Aroleflyn Posted by: mike1997
» RE: Aroleflyn Posted by: CarlaWaters

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Here's the problem
[Report this comment]
Posted by: mike1997 on Mar 23, 2009 9:12 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Right now in the United States, there is no alterntive out there. We thought we were voting for an alternative but it seems more and more likely we were duped. We have a democratic president selling us republican economics. We can't exactly turn to the party out of power for an alternative when the party out of power is the party in power!

I see one of two likely outcomes:

1. The system will patch itsself together to keep the status quo staggering along till the next even bigger crisis in another 6-8 years or

2. This is the big crisis and the implosion will suck us all under. At some point we will be given an alternative: true , raw naked fascisim or a more sane egalitarian alternative.

I sure hope we are smart enough to make the right choice.

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» RE: the new alternative Posted by: Sister_Lauren
» RE: Here's the problem Posted by: BobBrrz

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Why complain now Taibbi?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: 2dogarage on Mar 23, 2009 9:41 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
First of all this appears to be an amazing article that I'm sure if I could get past two pages would tell me every nuance of how the dominoes started falling but I really don't need to. It's not whether or not I believe you although I'm inclined not to it's that it doesn't really matter now, the damage is done. The big players have exploited us into ruin. The citizens of this country and people all over the world will be paying the price for many years.

Perhaps the last chance we had to turn this old ship around happened in the aftermath of 9/11. It was on that day that the final spell of mass hypnotism was cast on a distracted and compliant citizenry with resounding success and made all future crimes an easy sell.

What amazes me is that people like yourself, prone to paid outbursts of penetrating investigative journalism are among those who discredit those who would use well-proven science modalities, namely physics, to explain the impossibility of jet fuel crumbling two tall modern steel and concrete buildings into neat piles of rubble in as near free-fall speed as one could possibly imagine...

Additionally, the NIST report that explains that the identical "global collapse" of building 7 (sans airplane collision)-- is due to the fact that it is the first time in history that such a thing has ever occurred -- doesn't fool all of us either.

Even though you looked like an idiot compared to Robert Gates in that well-publicized debate about the events of 9/11 people actually still think you are somehow relevant.

I personally resent people like you with big voices mucking up the printwaves with anecdotal disinformation. You either have not applied the same level of scrutiny to the matter as you have in this article or else you are a media shill-- which pretty much implicates Rolling Stone as well (as if we hadn't figured that out with O'Rourke...).

So write on brother, write on. What with the financial crisis and all we need to keep our jobs right?

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» Another STFU for you, dude Posted by: freelyb
» Nice comment, dude Posted by: 2dogarage
» RE: Why complain now Taibbi? Posted by: quakergirl

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COULD THIS BE THE END OF RICO AND THE EMPIRE
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Posted by: ak47blog on Mar 23, 2009 9:41 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
GREAT ARTICLE ON CAUSE AND EFFECTS OMMITED IS THE SOLUTION RICO RICO RICO......The US financial, economic, and empire demise continues its downward slide into a black hole with mainstream media the so called guardians of the US Constitution assisting this demise with daily stereotyping, character assassination, distortions, distractions, myths, and propaganda. All transactions outlined in Tabbii article are not complex they are basic pyramid scams. The solution for the world's victims daily illegal pyramid transactions is RICO. No not the stereotype RICO Hollywood fiction created in the 1920's
but the RICO STATUTE US CODE TITLE 18 - RICO LAWS. The Department of Justice need to file criminal and conspiracy charges against the
the perpetrators including "Where's The Money Madoff", "Bonus Baby Distraction AIG", "Reverse Robin Hoods Goldman Sachs", "Old School Pyramid Scams BofA Citi Corp", "Reverse Pyramid Scams Wall Street Banks" and the "New York Stock Pyramid Exchange" "21st Century Scam FEDERAL RESERVE" and more. The current operators of massive “Pyramid Schemes” “Reverse Pyramid” scams continue their great crimes with assistance from government policy stimulus bailouts, myths, mainstream media distractions, and controlled markets.
Not one person or entity has been held accountable to date. Wall Street financial pyramid scams began 300 years ago under a Buttonwood Tree in Lower Manhattan location of the New York Stock Pyramid Exchange 220 years before Mr. Carlos Ponzi currently the shill for all illegal scams and schemes. The world's victims urgently need the RICO STATUTE to be imposed by the DOJ.

RICO has not been seen or heard COULD THIS BE THE END OF RICO and EMPIRE.

visit http://www.greatcampcustommailbox.com/ak47popcorn2007blog


# # #

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Overthrow the government!! Revolution is all we have left!!
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Posted by: DCostello2 on Mar 23, 2009 9:47 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The only thing left for the common people of America is to overthrow the government. It's quite obvious that Obama is just another rapist working for Wall St and the elite. Trillions of dollars heading for the pockets of the FIRE industry - Finance, Insurance & Real Estate. Heading FOR their pockets and leaving FROM our pockets. I know I've tried protesting for decades now. I've tried writing, calling, visiting my Congressmen/women, Senator's and all the rest. NOTHING WORKS!!! They continue to do the bidding of their Wall St masters. They continue to rape and pillage the country and everyone who lives in it. They continue to suck every last bit of life out of anything they possibly can. NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE THIS EXCEPT OVERTHROW!!! Read the words of Jefferson. It is our RIGHT to OVERTHROW this government that no longer serves the governed but instead serves only the corporations. It's time to start organizing to OVERTHROW.

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

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Feudal lords vs. the serfs
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Posted by: songbird1268 on Mar 23, 2009 10:43 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"These people need their trips to Baja, their spa treatments, their hand jobs... They don't function well without them."

Well, the rest of us need our food, our jobs, and a halfway decent place to live!!!! We don't function well without them, but who gives a sh*t?

Welcome to the Third World and the Dark Ages all rolled up into one putrid package, Amerika.

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gimmie shelter
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Posted by: gimmie shelter on Mar 23, 2009 10:51 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In the comments section many of you wrote that we will have to pay for what those on Wall Street have done, but isn't that only true if you play along with their construct. What if the country stopped paying mortgages or any number of things or how about we began to barter, and instead limited our use of currency. Do you think that we could make their riches worthless. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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» RE: gimmie shelter Posted by: gimmie shelter
» Well, we will have to re-learn Posted by: mariorsx
» RE: Well, we will have to re-learn Posted by: gimmie shelter

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The nuts are running the asylum
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Posted by: willymack on Mar 23, 2009 10:56 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Who in his right mind believes ANYTHING anyone on Wall Street says? The US government, that's who. Whether or not our government officials are in their right minds, or merely beholden to the greedy bastards on Wall Street seems to become more clear with each passing day, with Wall Street winning out. So, the same loathsome parasites who robbed so many of our citizens blind are now doing it for a second time, and with only vague promises to do things right in the future. Are we all nuts, or what?

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the world order!
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Posted by: om7buss on Mar 23, 2009 11:14 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Is not new, it is the british empire that is eating up the new empire of america, to obey their old masters of israel; to conquer the world; no for us but for themselves. spread the word in AOL ...www.henrybook.com

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I wonder if these Wall Street goons
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Posted by: songbird1268 on Mar 23, 2009 12:21 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
will someday wake up and realize that after they have destroyed all the little people there will no longer be anyone left to keep mooching off of so they can continue to sustain their egregiously ostentatious lifestyles?

Nah.

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When truth is the first casualty...
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Posted by: kogwonton on Mar 23, 2009 12:22 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...when every institution created to steward truth and justice becomes corrupt, we are forced to put our trust in our own judgment. The fire in the minds of men has done its job and faith in every single human institution is now ash.

So many seem to have broken bullshit-o-meters, and many can't do simple math. But it doesn't matter what your thoughts are concerning 9/11 or other questionable events, consistency proves that it makes no difference whether there is a 'conspiracy' or not. Consistency is not an attribute of stupidity. If all the events of the last decade were simply accidents and coincidences then the law of averages indicates that the idiots should have a chance at screwing up on the side of 'we the people' 50% of the time.

for all practical purposes we may as well have a conspiracy because of the consistent...

..."train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evincing a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security."

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» Pimply-faced adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Pimply-faced adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Two-bit, lying anti-Semite. Posted by: GuitarBill

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Organized theft - nothing new
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Posted by: jlowelld on Mar 23, 2009 12:40 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I enjoyed Taibbi's well researched article about the contemporary 'robber-barons'--but does this actually represent a revolution in the relationship between middle and working class Americans and the dominant-capital holders? Think of the early industrial revolution where workers spent 6 days a week, 12 hours a day enslaved to the factory system, which often included company housing and company store; or think of the Spanish encomiendos, which enslaved Andean workers and where 6 million died; or Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley; the American Plantation system--ultimately the dominant capital holders degenerate to killing-the-goose-that-lays-golden-egg. What Taibbi perceives as a sea-change is actually just the predictable acceleration of greed that marks all empires as they spiral into terminal collapse. Perhaps the best we can hope for is the allegorical plane crash on the Hudson: the empire collapses, but 'we' survive.

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qiu bono
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Posted by: cbishopp on Mar 23, 2009 1:50 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
At opensecrets.org they allow you to see stats of campaign contributions over the past several years. They provide the names of companies and to whom such contributions were given. It is an excellent resource. Here you'll also find total contributions for the 100 biggest givers in American politics since 1989--information that exists nowhere else.
Here among a list of labor unions like the Teamsters and the Carpenters and Joiners Union sits companies like Goldman Sachs, presently at number 4 on the list with $30,878,682 in contributions. Several other banks and huge conglomerate corporations fill the list and though most contributions are from individuals inside these organizations, it speaks volumes about our government and what it has become.
AIG is a fraudulent Ponzi scheme that has been used to funnel money to all the major banks so that they do not lose money on this recent flub in investment. We are footing the bill and to do it we are borrowing huge sums that can never be repaid.
Why would I want credit from a bank whose interest payment is not cycled back into the community?
I have no desire to make a banker rich. We can have socialized banks while still enjoying the fruits of capitalism and private enterprise. Now we are socializing the debt but not the profit.
Come on Obama, show us the money.
This robbery of the treasury is flagrant and obviously insane and will reduce this nation to rubble if we don't stand up now.

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No Truer Words
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Posted by: Tom Degan on Mar 23, 2009 2:26 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"It's over - we're officially, royally fucked."

Thank you, Matt. As always, you don't mince words. I cannot add a thing to this brilliant piece.

Stupid, Stupid Democrats

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

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Taibbi has me LMOA....he's been denying 9/11 truth for years
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Posted by: AngryWhiteFemale on Mar 23, 2009 2:40 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
and now says we're "all" victims to Wall St.
Speak for yourself, jerk. And Alternet actually paid you to write this drivel?
Alternet just dropped 200 points with this chick.
Go back to Rolling Stone and leave us alone. You are not welcome here. And I read Alternet less and less everyday.

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Blocade Wall St.
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Posted by: jeffrey7 on Mar 23, 2009 3:29 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Weld the doors shut, block the streets, stop the money trucks from getting to the banks. Piss all over their limos, Send bank Presidents a box of dogshit. Become a squatter if you get foreclosed. It's hightime they all got LSD ennemas with electro-shock therapy. Let the inner city gypsies make voodoo dolls of all of them and drive a nail in their asses.

Then seeing as how 'we' now own all their asses,including Big O's, let's be true citizen leaders and CUT THEIR PAY to $5 an hour. it won't kill them but they damn sure will feel like they died,because they'd be 'Average Americans' and there's nothing worse for stuck up,characterless,rich folks suddenly becoming 'average'.

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FASCIST COUP on Amerika
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Posted by: Mister_PsyOps on Mar 23, 2009 3:36 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"Too Big Too Fail" = Fascism

This obvious power grab is not news. How Taibbi describes it is not accurate by vast omissions and distortions. He does not even mention the promotion of the derivatives and subprime bubble by Sir "Bubbles" Greenspan, Paulson and Bernanke at the "Federal Reserve" Corp and Treasury. Or any of the cover the privately owned "FED" provided international Wall Street extortionists such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, etc, etc.

In other words, the core issue is again being overlooked.

The fact that someone at a discredited source like Rolling Stone's 911 coverup artist Matt Taibbi now engages at limited hangout on the ongoing Fascist hijack by claiming the obvious can only do a limited amount of good.

The truth is, our financial system has been privately rigged and cooked for a hundred years. And it has resulted in parasite Organized Corporate Crime rule that has finally bankrupted the nation. These corporate Mafiosi have bled the country dry financially and now want Fascist power over everything. This is done through the pretense that Washington will "take over" the Ponzi banking industry led by the "Federal Reserve" Corp (not federal, no reserves) when it is the Ponzi bankers that will now completely hijack the Washington-MSM circus.

The Federal Reserve is Bankrupt

Thru his regime, Mussolini coined the word Fascism as the merger of state and corporate power with corporate power in command.


"In 1913, the money power of the country was taken away from the people. By constitutional privilege it belongs with the Congress, but it was given up in the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve is no more Federal than Federal Express. But yet it has the power to determine the direction and use of money in our economy. If we could take that power back and put the Federal Reserve under Treasury, we start to be in a position of being able to control monetary policy on behalf of the United States people".
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (former Presidential candidate at Congress C-Span January 9th, 2009)

“Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take.”
Allan Greenspan (former Chairman “Federal Reserve” PBS' News Hour Sep 21, 2007)

“What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so…We think it would be a mistake to more deeply regulate.”
Alan Greespan (before the Senate Banking Committee 2003)

“Our financial institutions are in a strong financial position, and our economic fundamentals are healthy…”
Hank Paulson (Treasury Secretary and ex Goldman Sachs CEO at IMF meeting 10/20/07)

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» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: EncinoM
» Well, Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: PointMan
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: PointMan
» Prove it. Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: GuitarBill
» Do you have a Point.. Posted by: EncinoM
» Racist "FED" defender blows his CROCK Posted by: Mister_PsyOps
» If I'm status quo vermin Posted by: GuitarBill
» Tell us what the link says Posted by: GuitarBill
» Wow! That was deep. Posted by: GuitarBill
» Yeah, he has a point, EM, Posted by: GuitarBill
» In this case Kucinich is wrong Posted by: GuitarBill

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gimmie shelter
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Posted by: gimmie shelter on Mar 23, 2009 3:41 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There are 300+ million Americans so I'm sure if we put our mind to it we could do something for the victims of Wall Street and the corporations. How many do you think belong to the top 1 percent?

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insane!
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Posted by: Ghoulman on Mar 23, 2009 4:05 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Matt Taibbi @ RollingStone wrote:

" ...when you think about it, is insane: What had brought us to the brink of collapse in the first place was this relentless instinct for building ever-larger megacompanies, passing deregulatory measures to gradually feed all the little fish in the sea to an ever-shrinking pool of Bigger Fish. To fix this problem, the government should have slowly liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk."

HeY! That's the Free Market corporate ideology that runs this country pal! lol! 'We' truely believe corporations should own everything, and that includes the smaller state banks. That's why they didn't get bailout cash and guys like us (bastards), like AIG did get trillions. AIG lobbies Washington, the state banks don't. They are busy financing peoples homes. Weirdos!

Fantastic article. Thanks! ;)

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Change
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Posted by: dockboy on Mar 23, 2009 7:44 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is the change you believed in.

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Wow, These Comments Are Largely Unworthy of the Article.
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Posted by: grumble-bum on Mar 24, 2009 6:48 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Two things jump out at me from spending the morning with this article, & at least attempting to navigate the insane jumble of its commentary:

1.) Despite my annoyance with Mr. Tiabbi's habit of being nasty for nastiness' sake, I'm increasingly finding him to be a talented writer when it comes to boiling complete clusterfucks such as this one down into manageable concepts. Call me stupid, or under the sway of conspiratorial shadow-people if you prefer, but as someone whose innate skepticism of the Free Market religion caused me to see this sort of disaster looming a long way off (simple common sense), it's nice to be able to get so many of the pieces together like this. Few others are doing it, even fewer so concisely. So, bravo to you, Tiabbi, you second-rate Gonzo, you. I mean it.

2.) 911 conspiracy die-hard types are really, really sad. Not to mention very poor losers. Tiabbi's summation/debunking of the pro-conspiracy argument was one of the best I've read. It was amusingly executed &, like this article, strong in its bringing together all of the individually seductive ideas & showing how absurd they are in aggregate. That was how he kicked your collective asses, Truther Nation, & you're still so hung up on it that you can't value an excellent article on a completely different topic.

Doesn't say much for your brave quest for truth when your self-esteem is so damaged by hearing it, now does it?

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Goldman Sachs 100% payoff of AIG CDOs worth only 40-60%
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Posted by: irenderit on Mar 24, 2009 10:52 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Geithner and Liddy are both with Goldman Sachs(GS) connections(Liddy was on their Board)don't think for a minute GS didn't take charitable and income offset deductions for the AIG 100% payoffs they got, but they probably STILL HAVE THE NOTES! They will sell them back to the government's (5% "investor) watch!
TRIPLE OR QUAD-DIP?

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Who owns who?
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Posted by: John Sawyer on Mar 24, 2009 1:45 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Seems to me that one way to summarize this article, is that the structuring of the government buying of some ownership in the banks and other financial institutions, has been designed so that the ownership is actually the other way around--Wall Street winds up owning the government even more than it did before, but they and the government will continue to try to persuade us that that's not the case.

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how sad . . .
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Posted by: newsound on Mar 24, 2009 9:43 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How sad it is to realize that the next 4 years will be business as usual because greed is still greed no matter if it is explained away by someone living in a post alcoholic stupor or someone new, bright and articulate.

The promise of change is only on the surface, but Mr. Taibbi has looked beneath that surface. Unfortunately, his message will not be heard by those who really need to hear it and even if they do, they will dwell in denial. Getting the facts on a complicated issue is just too much to ask of most Americans.

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Rolling Stone part of Paulson/Goldman conspiracy!
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Posted by: Zula on Mar 24, 2009 10:01 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The editors of Rolling Stone Magazine are part of the giant Paulson/Goldman Sachs conspiracy that Matt Taibbi rails against in his article, The Big Takeover! By sprinkling the article with profanity his editors all but guaranteed that Americans who most need to be informed will not read it! GET A CLUE! You NEED those evangelicals and right-wingers! You can't just rail profanely and expect to win over a majority! Otherwise a great informative piece!

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Original?
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Posted by: vhanudux on Mar 25, 2009 6:58 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is a Rolling Stone article, not an Alternet article. Why are you publishing it in full?

Bad manners, Alternet.

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Barrings and Nick Leeson
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Posted by: cplot on Mar 25, 2009 10:45 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
just as a reminder, Nick Leeson served 6-1/2 years in a Singapore prison for dumping Barrings Bank with a 1.4 billion derivative margin call. That's when many of us first heard the word “derivative”. Cassano has outdone Leeson and bilked AIG out of $250 million or more in compensation while leaving AIG with what could be hundreds of times more than Leeson. And rather than asking how much time he's going to serve, we're wondering whether he needs a bonus (like an after termination thank you). Oh how times have changed quickly.

Also, Taibbi writes:

“The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards.”

On Democracy Now Taibbi characterized this as some surprise that we have both "left" and "right" implicated. However, none of these names surprise me and it is somewhat disingenuous to refer to any of these as "left". Maybe if Bernie Sanders was on the list, it would be surprising.

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parrotuya
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Posted by: parrotuya on Mar 25, 2009 12:25 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Great expose by Matt "Tell it like it is" Taibi. He needs his on TV show just like Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher! Rachel analyzes, Bill makes us laugh and Matt growls at "the establishment!"

DOWn, baby, DOWn!

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DEMS & MELTDOWN--THE FINANCING OF LEECHES
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Posted by: SassyFrassy on Mar 25, 2009 1:44 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
DERIVATIVES are what are used in hedge funds the driving force at the helm of the financial meltdown.

People most of the companies in the bailout are a form of a Madoff scheme for certain.

ENRON USED DERIVATIVES as well but coupled them with DUMMY CORPS.

what are DERIVATIVES---a type of risky gamble an insurance (whom cannot be called insurance otherwise they would have to be regulated by those in the insurance industry) so, they call them VEHICLES OR BETS which are sold to investment firms and they re-sell them.

the bet says that when a company FAILS they will be paid back--then they sell these insurance type BETS to companies.

Only in these BETS there the risky companies CREATED by those outside of USA whom HATE USA then these irresponsible USA Investment firms buy them NEVER CHECKING/NEVER CARING WHETHER they are a good investment for them then the IRRESPONSIBLE COMPANY tries to re-sell them. Only the GOOD INVESTMENT firms seeing they are no good---the GOOD INVESTMENT firms refuse to buy them.

Then the IRRESPONSIBLE investment firm is forced to sell all their OTHER good stock investments until all the IRRESPONSIBLE INVESTMENT firms have left in their companies are a hug compile of BAD DERIVATIVES at which time the IRRESPONSIBLE COMPANY is bankrupt and WASH DC SLUGS KNOWING THIS decided to tie a noose around the public neck CALLED by the name of bailout which will cause a NEVER ENDING STREAM OF MONEY out of the USA to the creators of these bad debts many of whom HATE USA -WHICH will bankrupt USA.

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DEMS & FINANCING LEECHES -PART B
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Posted by: SassyFrassy on Mar 25, 2009 1:47 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
however,Thomas Jefferson pretty well covered much about our situation today in two quotes made by him over 200 years ago. Our founders fathers feared what we are living today:

1. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

2. "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."*



the problem with these DERIVATIVE BETS that are used in HEDGE FUNDS is that these IRRESPONSIBLE USA INVESTMENT FIRMS buy these BETS why??

A. firms are either IRRESPONSIBLE AND DON'T CHECK ON WHAT THEY ARE INVESTING IN, or
B. OR DON'T CARE THEY WILL JUST TAKE THE UNSUSPECTING PUBLICS bailout MONEY AND RUN
C. OR, these companies DO KNOW and DON'T CARE because they figure when the USA IS BANKRUPT it will wipe out all small/mid business sectors leaving 1 or 2 or several of the engorged companies in the marketplace gravytrained for life partying hearty while the small/med business sectors and publics livliehoods bites the dust forever.

Because the BAILOUT creates a NEVERENDING MONEYDRAIN OF PUBLIC FUNDS out of USA to the creators of these BETS (many of whom hate the USA. stop the bailout people to ALL COMPANIES.

It has been ALL the companies in the BAILOUT whom are involved in this type scenario NOT JUST AIG however, the problem is that ALL THE COMPANIES need to be sent back to the public sector OTHERWISE the noose around the publics neck whose name is THE BAILOUT will be DRAGGING THE USA public into bankruptcy and will be forced into a SOC/GLOB/COMM/MARX/FAC GOVERNMENT and no one will be able to have a hope of starting a small business and making a profit to live off for their family.

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DEMS & FINANCING OF LEECHES-PART C (final)
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Posted by: SassyFrassy on Mar 25, 2009 1:53 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's important the PUBLIC seek LEGAL AND legislative action to OPPOSE THE BAILOUT. We must force these business to pay every dime back IN A TIMELY FASHION and restore these businesses to the PUBLIC SECTOR so that the SMALL bus/med business sector can participate in FREE ENTERPRISE.

why?? WE MUST STOP the gaping hole of neverending money trail of funds going back to these CREATORS OF THESE BETS (by the way many of whom 'want" to see America bankrupt because of the PUBLICS naivete of the unscrupulous nature of these BETS)

Do it for your children's sake otherwise there will be no hope for any young couple in love whom wishes to think about getting married and starting a new business and make it profitably work. IT WILL NEVER BE POSSIBLE IF THE PUBLIC doesn't show their determination to protect their CONSTITUTION. IN ADDITION, the 99 PERCENT of the public 'needs" to seek LEGAL AND LEGISLATIVE action to OPPOSE THE BAILOUT AND STIMULUS

To the present it's only one of the 1 % group of people attempting to destroy our Nation's economic systems.

WHY??? It was said to a VIP---that the reason the Socialists think they will win this time and are doing this is because ACLU and their DEMS SLUGS -- they don't think American's are " smart enough" to care to let their fingers do the walking/CLICKING to protect their lands, their CONSTITUTION or their freedoms. The DEMS and ACLU don't think the 99% of American's will be 'smart enough" to CARE about their country, their homes, their small business enough to kick the WASH DC SLUGS out and send them packing by way of Balagovich for NOT doing what is right to protect PUBLIC freedoms and the free enterprise system (ie meaning small business/med business) and rights.

Therefore, they want to make sure they take all freedoms away from the public and they want to make it impossible for FREE ENTERPRISE to exist for the small business and mid business and sole proprietorship thru gravytraining BIG BUSINESS bankrupting our Nation and MUSCLING OUT the small/med sole proprietorships, and creating a welfare state. A move straight out of the marxist handbook. and by attempting to eradicate free speech.

Then, we will be SOCIALIST/GLOBALIST/MARX/FACIST/COMM COUNTRY and the marketplace will be MONOPOLIZED AND DOMINATED by the ENGORGED 1 or 2 or several big businesses in sector. Gone will be the hope for any American whom would wish to start a business and earn profit to live on. it's why they cannot wait to get their hands on public money and THROW parties COSTING MILLIONS and big bonuses to CEO'S at the public expense

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DEMS IN WS BACK POCKET...SCAMMY
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Posted by: reelman on Mar 25, 2009 4:34 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Last September, the New York Times reported that individuals associated with the securities and investment industry had given $9.9 million to the Obama campaign, $7.4 million to the Hillary Clinton campaign and only $6.9 million to the McCain campaign. Either they're all Democrats or some commodity named "hope" was going through the roof last year.

Employees of Lehman Bros. alone gave Obama $370,000, compared to about $117,000 to McCain. (No wonder Bush let them go under.)

According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Responsive Politics, the top three corporate employers of donors to Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan. Six other financial giants were in the top 30 donors to the White House Dream Team: UBS AG, Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group.

Since 1998, the financial sector has given a total of $37.6 million to Obama, compared to $32.1 million to McCain. But Obama ran for his first national office only in 2004. So McCain got less from the financial industry in a decade that included two runs for president than Obama did in four years.

As we've seen in recent weeks, Wall Street gets what it pays for. Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd included language in the stimulus bill allowing executives of the bailed-out banks to collect million-dollar bonuses.

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Once again, fanatics claim only those who think 9/11 was an inside job deserve credibility and trust
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Posted by: yellow on Mar 27, 2009 9:20 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Once again, red neck conspiracy mongers join Islamic fanatics to discredit anyone who dares to dispute their claim that 9/11 was an inside job, probably by Israel. These idiots aren't here for honest debate but to spread hate and ignorance. The vast majority of the world, much of which is hostile to both the US and Israel, believes Al Qaeda did 9/11. Where are the 19 hijackers? Why don't they come forward? You are all pathetic fools. To say that anyone who thinks Al Qaeda didn't do 9/11 should be believed about other non-related issues shows how utterly isolated you are and irrational is your fanatical cause. In the end, you will lose everything!!

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» Dispute this, scatmuncher. Posted by: GuitarBill

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PEOPLE ARE RIOTING IN EUROPE- NOW ITS OUR TURN
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Posted by: cori on Mar 28, 2009 11:00 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
IF THEY CAN PERTETRATRE ECONOMIC TERRORISM SO CAN WE.

DON'T SPEND - DON'T BUY A NEW CAR - DON'T GO INTO DEBT.
BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SAFETY NETS- AND U CAN DIE IN THE GUTTER HERE
NO JOB SECURITY AND NOW THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY OUR ONLY SAFETY NETS- SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE THAT WE PAID FOR. THEY ARE LOOKING THE FUNDING AIG AND FUNDING WARS. BUT NOT US

DON'T TAKE OUT CREDIT CARDS - THEY ROB U

DON'T BORROW IF YOU CAN.

DRIVE LESS.

IF WE DON'T CONSUME THEY WON'T MAKE PROFITS.

IF THEY WANT PROSPERITY THEY MUCH GIVE MORE TO THE PUBLIC SECTOR

DEMAND SAFETY NETS
DEMAND AFFORDABLE COLLEGE
DEMAND A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM.

TELL THEM TO TAKE THAT PLASMA TV AND SHOVE IT

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EncinoM & Brunow:
[Report this comment]
Posted by: fsuthai on Mar 29, 2009 12:55 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
You're either ignorant assholes or boring & obvious trolls. Why don't you two get together, go to Breakback Mountain (or anywhere else) and play with each other? You're both sick MFs!!!

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Sorry to exclude you GuitarBill and 'yellow'...
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Posted by: fsuthai on Mar 29, 2009 4:11 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
but I hadn't read far enough into the commentaries to realize that both of you also qualify as right-wing cesspool scum and practiced agents of disinformation. What a pathetic pair you are; scurrilous hate mongers! I stand firmly with the other "9/11 Truthers" and wish you would take your lies elsewhere.

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» :-) Posted by: GuitarBill
Alternet Comments:

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After this article brought back those memories and made my blood boil, I can't help but wonder,
[Report this comment]
Posted by: JenniferBedingfield on Mar 23, 2009 12:35 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
what the hell Obama and his lame brains are trying to fool us into telling us to shut up and "sacrifice" when it's their job to undo their own damage that they and their pols created to begin with. I am also not surprised that Wall $treet is misusing that bailout money. Congress knew it all along but refused to come clean about it and it pisses me off. Sadly, our stupid electorate will go back to the "greed is good" mantra and plenty will go back to playing daytrading as usual and then again, we'll end up with a mess far worse and still refuse to understand what hit us all !

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» OMG Posted by: Rolomax
» RE: OMG Posted by: CarlaWaters
» RE: OMG Posted by: pelican beak
» RE: OMG Posted by: WYGunston
» RE: OMG Posted by: pelican beak
» RE: OMG Posted by: carsoncitygal
» RE: OMG Posted by: pelican beak
» no your stupid Posted by: MobileSucks
» RE: no your stupid Posted by: Rolomax

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AIG is a distraction. Goldman Sachs
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Posted by: weathered on Mar 23, 2009 1:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is satan's investment banker.

Lets bring Eliot Spitzer back in from the cold and have him work w/Andrew Cuomo to expand the scope of this fraud. Engaging Prosecutors in Switzerland/Israel(if they even have one)is essential to evoke RICO.

Unless we inflict pain and attach all assests;real, collateral, 3rd. party and those parked in the 2 most secretive banking franchises Israel/Swtlnd. we'll see the real criminals continue to exploit and smash any confidence or goodfaith going forward.

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you got that right!
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Posted by: Riposter on Mar 23, 2009 1:36 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Couldn't have said it better.

Here's the link to an excellent report called "Sold Out", which reviews how the banksters' thousands of lobbyists and their minions in Washington
created the mess, along with rolling commentary on recent events at a new site called Wall Street Watch.

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you got that right!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Riposter on Mar 23, 2009 1:37 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Couldn't have said it better.

BTW, an excellent report called "Sold Out", reviews how the banksters' thousands of lobbyists and their minions in Washington created the mess. It's posted at a new site called Wall Street Watch.

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Bought and Paid For
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Posted by: DrBrian on Mar 23, 2009 1:51 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Let's not forget that Obama's biggest campaign donors were these very people. That's why he chose the team he did, and why he's supporting the policies he is.

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» Obama's Moral Hazard Posted by: DrBrian

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Receivership NOT bailout!
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Posted by: cplot on Mar 23, 2009 2:13 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
These banks and AIG should be in receivership. They shouldn't be bailed out. Their liabilities should be prioritized. For example, the naked credit default swaps – those that are pure gambling – shouldn't be covered until all the non-naked (legitimate insurance policies) CDSs have all been covered.

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Fiat seignorage money is taxpayer money
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Posted by: cplot on Mar 23, 2009 2:24 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Matt Taibbi writes:

“Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole.”

This is false. Fiat money creation rightfully belongs to the US treasury by the dictates of the US constitution. However, since we have allowed the Federal Reserve to usurp that right, the trillions of dollars created by the Fed for the benefit of its member banks are trillions of dollars that will now need to be acquired through other means such as borrowing or taxation. There is therefore a dollar-for-dollar cost to taxpayers in allowing the Fed to usurp these seignorage benefits.

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This is a significant article.
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Posted by: and_abottleofrum on Mar 23, 2009 2:28 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's great that Mr. Taibbi is shining a spotlight on these new channels, mentioned in the quotation below, for funneling money to the financial industry. This matter deserves a lot more coverage and popular scrutiny.

the Fed had simply stopped using relatively transparent devices like repurchase agreements to pump its money into the hands of private companies. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with names you've never heard of. There is the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF). For good measure, there's also something called a Money Market Investor Funding Facility, plus three facilities called Maiden Lane I, II and III to aid bailout recipients like Bear Stearns and AIG.

While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments). Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy.

No one knows who's getting that money or exactly how much of it is disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America's credit rating. Moreover, no one can really be sure if these new institutions are even temporary at all - or whether they are being set up as permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible lenders.

This is very disconcerting stuff.

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It's looking more and more like the financial industry, and its bootlickers
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Posted by: and_abottleofrum on Mar 23, 2009 2:46 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
at the Federal Reserve and in the Treasury Department, will control this country's financial future. The numbers they're dealing with in just the last few months dwarf what Congress is empowered to allocate in a year.

Congress is of course the most democratic branch of the federal government, and it appears it's getting squeezed out of the biggest financial decisions. I am sure financial companies love having non-elected appointees in government decide how much money they can get.

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This comment has been removed from the site due to non-compliance with AlterNet's community policies.
» Good idea Posted by: pfgetty
» Your good idea is BS Posted by: pfgetty
» RE: Your good idea is BS Posted by: brunowe

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Financial mumbo jumbo
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Posted by: cplot on Mar 23, 2009 3:51 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I agree that the financial industry hides behind their jargon in order to intimidate regulators and the public and claim they are experts and everything should be left up to them. However, that also means they're making the situation more complicated than it really is. Basically we have four things intermingled at AIG that probably should have never been intermingled: 1) traditional securities such as equity (e.g., stocks) and credit/debt (bonds, mortgages, treasuries) instruments; 2) annuities and other life insurance policies; 3) covered derivatives where the derivative holder also holds an underlying asset the owner is insuring; 4) naked derivatives where the sole purpose was to gamble and perhaps even bilk taxpayers when the clear real estate bubble collapsed.

These each require different solutions all under the umbrella of receivership. The annuities and life insurance policies should be covered first. Most of the remaining focus should be on the underlying assets. Renegotiate the terms of mortgages and other debt instruments (including principal and interest) to allow homeowners to remain in their homes and still repay their debts. This focus on underlying assets will allow the derivatives to largely take care of themselves. The only place taxpayer money should even be considered is in possibly covering these derivative / insurance liabilities where the mortgage is renegotiated and the derivative owner has been guaranteed by AIG to receive full payment even in that event. Its an open public policy question whether even something like that should be covered.

For the naked derivatives, the clear answer is that we should not cover those. This is gambling pure and simple. The cost of not covering these assets is that AIG and others like them may have trouble fostering such gambling in the future. That's a win then that costs no taxpayer money. Discouraging this type of “investment” should be done.

Like short selling these naked derivatives provide no benefit to markets. The typical answer offered by the financial industry retreats entirely into jargon and hand-waving to claim that you simply don't understand the benefits. For example, the claim is often made that short selling allows information that has not yet been released to the public to be reflected in the asset's price: or in other words it facilitates insider trading. There the use of jargon is clear, they want to get rich and regulation gets in the way of that (fuck it if they're getting rich provides no benefit for smoothly operating markets which these capitalist claim to hold so dear).

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» RE: Financial mumbo jumbo Posted by: crazy carlos

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Good article
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Rolomax on Mar 23, 2009 5:16 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's a lot to ponder.

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Amazing, spot-on article that scares the shit out of me
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Posted by: peterjkraus on Mar 23, 2009 6:00 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
He's abolutely right ...... for the few years he has been writing for them, Matt Taibbi alone was worth the subscription price. Fearlessly, he rolls up the current financial mess, long in the making, and points to the criminals. And he knows what he's doing: Matt wrote for a Moscow-based English-language newspaper while living in the post-USSR. He, if anyone, knows how white collar criminals think and act, with or without government collusion. Among all the articles coursing around, this one is it, the Mother of all Scamreviews.

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"Government by Bumper Sticker"
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Posted by: Lilly on Mar 23, 2009 6:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When issues are complex (and God knows our current economic situation would challenge any honest economics professor) politicians are guaranteed to boil complex ideas down into slogans and then sell the slogans to the people. Republicans have historically been better at this than Democrats (remember Palin turning a crowd by shouting "Drill, Baby, Drill"?). And when government by bumpersticker starts, issues are further reduced by the generous application of hysterical rumors, lies, and personal attacks. Here are a few bits from yesterday's townhall.com (conservative website that pairs columnists with posters): "Acorn Brownshirts Attacking Citizens!"; "Congress Also Got Huge Bonuses!"; "Obama Is A Sociopath!". Obama's actual statement that he recommends increased oversight of Wall Street compensation was reduced to "Obama will regulate salaries for all companies"; this morning that's been followed with a lead article cleverly implying that Obama will confiscate private property, a message not missed by the stupidest poster. And people who can't write an English sentence, who brag that they don't read newspapers ("too liberal"), and who get all their information from talk radio and FOX, are very expert at picking up on every inflammatory cue that's thrown out there. I doubt the Obama government understands the incendiary potential. Unless Obama & People get on top of this, by 2012 we will have
The Republican Revolution, Act III (I having been Reagan and II having been GWB; III will bring the end of this nation).

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chicken little
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Posted by: SeattlePackedSnowandCollidedCars on Mar 23, 2009 6:24 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
yea i said it. Matt needs to chill till the next episode, this is what he and many others voted for.

The grown up will be back in Washington come 2010/2012

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» RE: chicken little Posted by: JSquercia

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Sorry, Matt Taibbi, how can we believe anything you write? . . .
[Report this comment]
Posted by: dustdevil on Mar 23, 2009 6:30 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
when you have used your pulphit to help cover up the greatest crime in US history?

You have repeatedly produced articles attempting to debunk 9/11 truth theories.

You even debated David Ray Griffin in a series of articles on this website. He kicked your ass so bad you were driven to complain that he made you appear to be an idiot.

I will not waste my time reading long-winded articles by some hack who can't tell the difference between exploding buildings and buildings that collapse.

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» YES Posted by: leafsong1
» You miss the point Posted by: leafsong1
» RE: You miss the point Posted by: dustdevil
» Peace, TreeTopper Posted by: 2dogarage

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Finally, Somebody Gets It
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Posted by: Eddie K. on Mar 23, 2009 6:31 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Great piece by Taibbi.

Whether or not the Vampire Financial Class(VFC for short), international in scope, cashed in from the worldwide effects of 9/11(and of course they did to the tune of trillions of $$$, planned or not), they clearly saw the GWB Administration as the best chance ever to create a permanent financial Overworld., answerable to no national government nor to any international court. I think much of what seems confusing or incompetent under Bush/Cheney can be explained by this ultimate goal.

But through genuine political incompetence, beginning in ’06 and certainly after the Democratic win that year, the window began to close. The USA was(or soon would be) moving again toward a less insane “top-down” political culture, and the Obama Phenomenon(leaving aside his willingness to take this on) created a “now or never” atmosphere.

So it was now. Maybe in 2109, we(okay, our grandchildren) will be able to see clearly what the machinations were, but I think two things happened: 1)an internal mob war within the VFC; and 2) an attempt to “acquire” the US government and other governments of the West through classic loanshark tactics, simply stated as “pay up or die”.

The mob war is clear. As Chomsky so often writes, one understands the reasons for a war only after it is over, when one looks at who won and who lost. If we look at Goldman Sachs as the Corleone Family(with Robert Ruben as the Godfather, and Summers/Paulson/Geithner as the three sons[yes, definitely Geithner as Fredo], and if we look at Lehman(Goldman’s blood enemy for decades) & Bear Stearns as the Barzini & Tatallia Families, then clarity emerges. After all, why bale out AIG the same week you let Lehman die? Why funnel 13 billion dollars through AIG to Goldman and zero for Lehman? Wasn’t AIG also on the hook for Lehman debts? What happened to those creditors? One thing that is not clear as of yet is what specific parts of the Overworld triumphed with Goldman/AIG? (Eliot Spitzer probably knows this. His book should really be something.)

The second part Obama, whether or not he can(or intends) to do anything about it, clearly does get it. During his OC town hall, he perfectly described AIG in this way:

“It’s like they've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger, you don't want them to blow up, but you've got to ease them off the trigger."

The bomb, of course, being the economic welfare of the people of the West. (And I really do think, for all his savoir faire, that Obama[much like JFK] was and remains stunned by exactly where real power lies.) And the best tactic the Overworld had – reversing the normal desire to remain in the shadows – was to reveal its malignancy. As cancer works – where malignant tissue and cells takeover and become indistinguishable from healthy cells --, the VFC revealed that there is now no difference between its health and the health of the Western world. Worse, they revealed that the health of the world is completely dependent on the health of the Overworld.

Worse yet will be the second act of the nightmare. In what can only be described as magnificent and elegant brilliance, the saving of the Vampires will accomplish something hoped for by the overclass for at least 200 years: the permanent crippling of all major Western governments to finance anything other than the preservation of the VFC and the financing of the military whose sole function is to protect the Overworld.

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» RE: Finally, Somebody Gets It Posted by: Sister_Lauren

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Taibbi for Treasury Secretary!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: littlepitcher on Mar 23, 2009 7:24 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Superb translation of a difficult subject into totally understandable
language. Stephen King couldn't have written a story this nightmarish.

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Fantastic Article
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Posted by: Gravitas on Mar 23, 2009 7:26 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is a fantastic article. As an educator, I really appreciate the way he is able to break it down for the average person. In so many other articles, the facts are so obscured it makes one wonder. Do they not want the public to understand, or do they not fully understand it themselves? Or both. And any rate, Taibbi has a gift.

This article should be disseminated as much as possible. I am creative in the way I am spreading it. I link it in MSM bulletin boards. Yesterday the Trib ran a lame article on Blago's hair and why the bald author was jealous. Perfect opportunity to ask why above excellent article being ignored by MSM and we have this fluff piece? Link. Bald men, knowledge is sexier then hair, READ!

Gee, what would our country be like if we had real journalists like Taibbi reporting what we need to know instead of those glamorized puppets mouthing what corporate America wants us to hear? A democracy?

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PULL THEIR CHARTERS! PULL THEIR CHARTERS!
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Posted by: Koondog on Mar 23, 2009 8:08 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
None of these corporate Frankenstein's monsters could threaten anyone if their charters were legally revoked. That act is the stake through the heart of the vampire and dissolves the corporation. That is the only threat these people will listen to. It's the gun to their heads they apparently need to be kept in line. Check out www.poclad.org. The courts give death sentences to small corporations that act badly, but never a truly damaging one like AIG or Goldman. Or Eli Lilly. Or Exxon Mobil. Or ... or ... or. Spreading the word that there is something truly effective that can be done to rein in corporate abuses is the actual "change we can believe in." Spread the word.

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planned all along
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Posted by: warrior woman on Mar 23, 2009 8:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's been planned all along. Sounds crazy or inconceivable, but it has been planned all along.

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Would Movement Please...
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Posted by: EncinoM on Mar 23, 2009 8:36 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
STFU.

This has nothing to do with 9/11 or the lies and misinformation that Griffin & Co. have filled your tiny brains with.

This is a serious discussion about the financial health of a nation, not some fantasy about shadow governments, if you want that go to rense.com or infowars.com.

STOP TROLLING AROUND HERE.

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» Really? How about... Posted by: LeftWright
» More BS, LeftWright? Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: EncinoM... Posted by: Sister_Lauren
» RE: ncinoM... Posted by: EncinoM
» Wonder where you got them FAX? Posted by: 2dogarage
» Straw man. Posted by: GuitarBill
» Adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Lunatic Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: Would Movement Please... Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: Would Movement Please... Posted by: EncinoM

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This comment has been removed from the site due to non-compliance with AlterNet's community policies.
» RE: Aroleflyn Posted by: mike1997
» RE: Aroleflyn Posted by: CarlaWaters

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This comment has been removed from the site due to non-compliance with AlterNet's community policies.

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Here's the problem
[Report this comment]
Posted by: mike1997 on Mar 23, 2009 9:12 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Right now in the United States, there is no alterntive out there. We thought we were voting for an alternative but it seems more and more likely we were duped. We have a democratic president selling us republican economics. We can't exactly turn to the party out of power for an alternative when the party out of power is the party in power!

I see one of two likely outcomes:

1. The system will patch itsself together to keep the status quo staggering along till the next even bigger crisis in another 6-8 years or

2. This is the big crisis and the implosion will suck us all under. At some point we will be given an alternative: true , raw naked fascisim or a more sane egalitarian alternative.

I sure hope we are smart enough to make the right choice.

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» RE: the new alternative Posted by: Sister_Lauren
» RE: Here's the problem Posted by: BobBrrz

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Why complain now Taibbi?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: 2dogarage on Mar 23, 2009 9:41 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
First of all this appears to be an amazing article that I'm sure if I could get past two pages would tell me every nuance of how the dominoes started falling but I really don't need to. It's not whether or not I believe you although I'm inclined not to it's that it doesn't really matter now, the damage is done. The big players have exploited us into ruin. The citizens of this country and people all over the world will be paying the price for many years.

Perhaps the last chance we had to turn this old ship around happened in the aftermath of 9/11. It was on that day that the final spell of mass hypnotism was cast on a distracted and compliant citizenry with resounding success and made all future crimes an easy sell.

What amazes me is that people like yourself, prone to paid outbursts of penetrating investigative journalism are among those who discredit those who would use well-proven science modalities, namely physics, to explain the impossibility of jet fuel crumbling two tall modern steel and concrete buildings into neat piles of rubble in as near free-fall speed as one could possibly imagine...

Additionally, the NIST report that explains that the identical "global collapse" of building 7 (sans airplane collision)-- is due to the fact that it is the first time in history that such a thing has ever occurred -- doesn't fool all of us either.

Even though you looked like an idiot compared to Robert Gates in that well-publicized debate about the events of 9/11 people actually still think you are somehow relevant.

I personally resent people like you with big voices mucking up the printwaves with anecdotal disinformation. You either have not applied the same level of scrutiny to the matter as you have in this article or else you are a media shill-- which pretty much implicates Rolling Stone as well (as if we hadn't figured that out with O'Rourke...).

So write on brother, write on. What with the financial crisis and all we need to keep our jobs right?

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» Another STFU for you, dude Posted by: freelyb
» Nice comment, dude Posted by: 2dogarage
» RE: Why complain now Taibbi? Posted by: quakergirl

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COULD THIS BE THE END OF RICO AND THE EMPIRE
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Posted by: ak47blog on Mar 23, 2009 9:41 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
GREAT ARTICLE ON CAUSE AND EFFECTS OMMITED IS THE SOLUTION RICO RICO RICO......The US financial, economic, and empire demise continues its downward slide into a black hole with mainstream media the so called guardians of the US Constitution assisting this demise with daily stereotyping, character assassination, distortions, distractions, myths, and propaganda. All transactions outlined in Tabbii article are not complex they are basic pyramid scams. The solution for the world's victims daily illegal pyramid transactions is RICO. No not the stereotype RICO Hollywood fiction created in the 1920's
but the RICO STATUTE US CODE TITLE 18 - RICO LAWS. The Department of Justice need to file criminal and conspiracy charges against the
the perpetrators including "Where's The Money Madoff", "Bonus Baby Distraction AIG", "Reverse Robin Hoods Goldman Sachs", "Old School Pyramid Scams BofA Citi Corp", "Reverse Pyramid Scams Wall Street Banks" and the "New York Stock Pyramid Exchange" "21st Century Scam FEDERAL RESERVE" and more. The current operators of massive “Pyramid Schemes” “Reverse Pyramid” scams continue their great crimes with assistance from government policy stimulus bailouts, myths, mainstream media distractions, and controlled markets.
Not one person or entity has been held accountable to date. Wall Street financial pyramid scams began 300 years ago under a Buttonwood Tree in Lower Manhattan location of the New York Stock Pyramid Exchange 220 years before Mr. Carlos Ponzi currently the shill for all illegal scams and schemes. The world's victims urgently need the RICO STATUTE to be imposed by the DOJ.

RICO has not been seen or heard COULD THIS BE THE END OF RICO and EMPIRE.

visit http://www.greatcampcustommailbox.com/ak47popcorn2007blog


# # #

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Overthrow the government!! Revolution is all we have left!!
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Posted by: DCostello2 on Mar 23, 2009 9:47 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The only thing left for the common people of America is to overthrow the government. It's quite obvious that Obama is just another rapist working for Wall St and the elite. Trillions of dollars heading for the pockets of the FIRE industry - Finance, Insurance & Real Estate. Heading FOR their pockets and leaving FROM our pockets. I know I've tried protesting for decades now. I've tried writing, calling, visiting my Congressmen/women, Senator's and all the rest. NOTHING WORKS!!! They continue to do the bidding of their Wall St masters. They continue to rape and pillage the country and everyone who lives in it. They continue to suck every last bit of life out of anything they possibly can. NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE THIS EXCEPT OVERTHROW!!! Read the words of Jefferson. It is our RIGHT to OVERTHROW this government that no longer serves the governed but instead serves only the corporations. It's time to start organizing to OVERTHROW.

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

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Feudal lords vs. the serfs
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Posted by: songbird1268 on Mar 23, 2009 10:43 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"These people need their trips to Baja, their spa treatments, their hand jobs... They don't function well without them."

Well, the rest of us need our food, our jobs, and a halfway decent place to live!!!! We don't function well without them, but who gives a sh*t?

Welcome to the Third World and the Dark Ages all rolled up into one putrid package, Amerika.

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gimmie shelter
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Posted by: gimmie shelter on Mar 23, 2009 10:51 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In the comments section many of you wrote that we will have to pay for what those on Wall Street have done, but isn't that only true if you play along with their construct. What if the country stopped paying mortgages or any number of things or how about we began to barter, and instead limited our use of currency. Do you think that we could make their riches worthless. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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» RE: gimmie shelter Posted by: gimmie shelter
» Well, we will have to re-learn Posted by: mariorsx
» RE: Well, we will have to re-learn Posted by: gimmie shelter

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The nuts are running the asylum
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Posted by: willymack on Mar 23, 2009 10:56 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Who in his right mind believes ANYTHING anyone on Wall Street says? The US government, that's who. Whether or not our government officials are in their right minds, or merely beholden to the greedy bastards on Wall Street seems to become more clear with each passing day, with Wall Street winning out. So, the same loathsome parasites who robbed so many of our citizens blind are now doing it for a second time, and with only vague promises to do things right in the future. Are we all nuts, or what?

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the world order!
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Posted by: om7buss on Mar 23, 2009 11:14 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Is not new, it is the british empire that is eating up the new empire of america, to obey their old masters of israel; to conquer the world; no for us but for themselves. spread the word in AOL ...www.henrybook.com

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I wonder if these Wall Street goons
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Posted by: songbird1268 on Mar 23, 2009 12:21 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
will someday wake up and realize that after they have destroyed all the little people there will no longer be anyone left to keep mooching off of so they can continue to sustain their egregiously ostentatious lifestyles?

Nah.

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When truth is the first casualty...
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Posted by: kogwonton on Mar 23, 2009 12:22 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...when every institution created to steward truth and justice becomes corrupt, we are forced to put our trust in our own judgment. The fire in the minds of men has done its job and faith in every single human institution is now ash.

So many seem to have broken bullshit-o-meters, and many can't do simple math. But it doesn't matter what your thoughts are concerning 9/11 or other questionable events, consistency proves that it makes no difference whether there is a 'conspiracy' or not. Consistency is not an attribute of stupidity. If all the events of the last decade were simply accidents and coincidences then the law of averages indicates that the idiots should have a chance at screwing up on the side of 'we the people' 50% of the time.

for all practical purposes we may as well have a conspiracy because of the consistent...

..."train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evincing a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security."

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» Pimply-faced adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Pimply-faced adolescent moron Posted by: dustdevil
» Two-bit, lying anti-Semite. Posted by: GuitarBill

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Organized theft - nothing new
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Posted by: jlowelld on Mar 23, 2009 12:40 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I enjoyed Taibbi's well researched article about the contemporary 'robber-barons'--but does this actually represent a revolution in the relationship between middle and working class Americans and the dominant-capital holders? Think of the early industrial revolution where workers spent 6 days a week, 12 hours a day enslaved to the factory system, which often included company housing and company store; or think of the Spanish encomiendos, which enslaved Andean workers and where 6 million died; or Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley; the American Plantation system--ultimately the dominant capital holders degenerate to killing-the-goose-that-lays-golden-egg. What Taibbi perceives as a sea-change is actually just the predictable acceleration of greed that marks all empires as they spiral into terminal collapse. Perhaps the best we can hope for is the allegorical plane crash on the Hudson: the empire collapses, but 'we' survive.

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qiu bono
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Posted by: cbishopp on Mar 23, 2009 1:50 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
At opensecrets.org they allow you to see stats of campaign contributions over the past several years. They provide the names of companies and to whom such contributions were given. It is an excellent resource. Here you'll also find total contributions for the 100 biggest givers in American politics since 1989--information that exists nowhere else.
Here among a list of labor unions like the Teamsters and the Carpenters and Joiners Union sits companies like Goldman Sachs, presently at number 4 on the list with $30,878,682 in contributions. Several other banks and huge conglomerate corporations fill the list and though most contributions are from individuals inside these organizations, it speaks volumes about our government and what it has become.
AIG is a fraudulent Ponzi scheme that has been used to funnel money to all the major banks so that they do not lose money on this recent flub in investment. We are footing the bill and to do it we are borrowing huge sums that can never be repaid.
Why would I want credit from a bank whose interest payment is not cycled back into the community?
I have no desire to make a banker rich. We can have socialized banks while still enjoying the fruits of capitalism and private enterprise. Now we are socializing the debt but not the profit.
Come on Obama, show us the money.
This robbery of the treasury is flagrant and obviously insane and will reduce this nation to rubble if we don't stand up now.

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No Truer Words
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Posted by: Tom Degan on Mar 23, 2009 2:26 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"It's over - we're officially, royally fucked."

Thank you, Matt. As always, you don't mince words. I cannot add a thing to this brilliant piece.

Stupid, Stupid Democrats

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

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Taibbi has me LMOA....he's been denying 9/11 truth for years
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Posted by: AngryWhiteFemale on Mar 23, 2009 2:40 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
and now says we're "all" victims to Wall St.
Speak for yourself, jerk. And Alternet actually paid you to write this drivel?
Alternet just dropped 200 points with this chick.
Go back to Rolling Stone and leave us alone. You are not welcome here. And I read Alternet less and less everyday.

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Blocade Wall St.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: jeffrey7 on Mar 23, 2009 3:29 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Weld the doors shut, block the streets, stop the money trucks from getting to the banks. Piss all over their limos, Send bank Presidents a box of dogshit. Become a squatter if you get foreclosed. It's hightime they all got LSD ennemas with electro-shock therapy. Let the inner city gypsies make voodoo dolls of all of them and drive a nail in their asses.

Then seeing as how 'we' now own all their asses,including Big O's, let's be true citizen leaders and CUT THEIR PAY to $5 an hour. it won't kill them but they damn sure will feel like they died,because they'd be 'Average Americans' and there's nothing worse for stuck up,characterless,rich folks suddenly becoming 'average'.

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FASCIST COUP on Amerika
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Posted by: Mister_PsyOps on Mar 23, 2009 3:36 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"Too Big Too Fail" = Fascism

This obvious power grab is not news. How Taibbi describes it is not accurate by vast omissions and distortions. He does not even mention the promotion of the derivatives and subprime bubble by Sir "Bubbles" Greenspan, Paulson and Bernanke at the "Federal Reserve" Corp and Treasury. Or any of the cover the privately owned "FED" provided international Wall Street extortionists such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, etc, etc.

In other words, the core issue is again being overlooked.

The fact that someone at a discredited source like Rolling Stone's 911 coverup artist Matt Taibbi now engages at limited hangout on the ongoing Fascist hijack by claiming the obvious can only do a limited amount of good.

The truth is, our financial system has been privately rigged and cooked for a hundred years. And it has resulted in parasite Organized Corporate Crime rule that has finally bankrupted the nation. These corporate Mafiosi have bled the country dry financially and now want Fascist power over everything. This is done through the pretense that Washington will "take over" the Ponzi banking industry led by the "Federal Reserve" Corp (not federal, no reserves) when it is the Ponzi bankers that will now completely hijack the Washington-MSM circus.

The Federal Reserve is Bankrupt

Thru his regime, Mussolini coined the word Fascism as the merger of state and corporate power with corporate power in command.


"In 1913, the money power of the country was taken away from the people. By constitutional privilege it belongs with the Congress, but it was given up in the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve is no more Federal than Federal Express. But yet it has the power to determine the direction and use of money in our economy. If we could take that power back and put the Federal Reserve under Treasury, we start to be in a position of being able to control monetary policy on behalf of the United States people".
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (former Presidential candidate at Congress C-Span January 9th, 2009)

“Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take.”
Allan Greenspan (former Chairman “Federal Reserve” PBS' News Hour Sep 21, 2007)

“What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so…We think it would be a mistake to more deeply regulate.”
Alan Greespan (before the Senate Banking Committee 2003)

“Our financial institutions are in a strong financial position, and our economic fundamentals are healthy…”
Hank Paulson (Treasury Secretary and ex Goldman Sachs CEO at IMF meeting 10/20/07)

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» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: EncinoM
» Well, Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: PointMan
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: PointMan
» Prove it. Posted by: GuitarBill
» RE: FASCIST COUP on Amerika Posted by: GuitarBill
» Do you have a Point.. Posted by: EncinoM
» Racist "FED" defender blows his CROCK Posted by: Mister_PsyOps
» If I'm status quo vermin Posted by: GuitarBill
» Tell us what the link says Posted by: GuitarBill
» Wow! That was deep. Posted by: GuitarBill
» Yeah, he has a point, EM, Posted by: GuitarBill
» In this case Kucinich is wrong Posted by: GuitarBill

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gimmie shelter
[Report this comment]
Posted by: gimmie shelter on Mar 23, 2009 3:41 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There are 300+ million Americans so I'm sure if we put our mind to it we could do something for the victims of Wall Street and the corporations. How many do you think belong to the top 1 percent?

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insane!
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Posted by: Ghoulman on Mar 23, 2009 4:05 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Matt Taibbi @ RollingStone wrote:

" ...when you think about it, is insane: What had brought us to the brink of collapse in the first place was this relentless instinct for building ever-larger megacompanies, passing deregulatory measures to gradually feed all the little fish in the sea to an ever-shrinking pool of Bigger Fish. To fix this problem, the government should have slowly liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk."

HeY! That's the Free Market corporate ideology that runs this country pal! lol! 'We' truely believe corporations should own everything, and that includes the smaller state banks. That's why they didn't get bailout cash and guys like us (bastards), like AIG did get trillions. AIG lobbies Washington, the state banks don't. They are busy financing peoples homes. Weirdos!

Fantastic article. Thanks! ;)

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Change
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Posted by: dockboy on Mar 23, 2009 7:44 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is the change you believed in.

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Wow, These Comments Are Largely Unworthy of the Article.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: grumble-bum on Mar 24, 2009 6:48 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Two things jump out at me from spending the morning with this article, & at least attempting to navigate the insane jumble of its commentary:

1.) Despite my annoyance with Mr. Tiabbi's habit of being nasty for nastiness' sake, I'm increasingly finding him to be a talented writer when it comes to boiling complete clusterfucks such as this one down into manageable concepts. Call me stupid, or under the sway of conspiratorial shadow-people if you prefer, but as someone whose innate skepticism of the Free Market religion caused me to see this sort of disaster looming a long way off (simple common sense), it's nice to be able to get so many of the pieces together like this. Few others are doing it, even fewer so concisely. So, bravo to you, Tiabbi, you second-rate Gonzo, you. I mean it.

2.) 911 conspiracy die-hard types are really, really sad. Not to mention very poor losers. Tiabbi's summation/debunking of the pro-conspiracy argument was one of the best I've read. It was amusingly executed &, like this article, strong in its bringing together all of the individually seductive ideas & showing how absurd they are in aggregate. That was how he kicked your collective asses, Truther Nation, & you're still so hung up on it that you can't value an excellent article on a completely different topic.

Doesn't say much for your brave quest for truth when your self-esteem is so damaged by hearing it, now does it?

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Goldman Sachs 100% payoff of AIG CDOs worth only 40-60%
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Posted by: irenderit on Mar 24, 2009 10:52 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Geithner and Liddy are both with Goldman Sachs(GS) connections(Liddy was on their Board)don't think for a minute GS didn't take charitable and income offset deductions for the AIG 100% payoffs they got, but they probably STILL HAVE THE NOTES! They will sell them back to the government's (5% "investor) watch!
TRIPLE OR QUAD-DIP?

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Who owns who?
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Posted by: John Sawyer on Mar 24, 2009 1:45 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Seems to me that one way to summarize this article, is that the structuring of the government buying of some ownership in the banks and other financial institutions, has been designed so that the ownership is actually the other way around--Wall Street winds up owning the government even more than it did before, but they and the government will continue to try to persuade us that that's not the case.

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how sad . . .
[Report this comment]
Posted by: newsound on Mar 24, 2009 9:43 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How sad it is to realize that the next 4 years will be business as usual because greed is still greed no matter if it is explained away by someone living in a post alcoholic stupor or someone new, bright and articulate.

The promise of change is only on the surface, but Mr. Taibbi has looked beneath that surface. Unfortunately, his message will not be heard by those who really need to hear it and even if they do, they will dwell in denial. Getting the facts on a complicated issue is just too much to ask of most Americans.

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Rolling Stone part of Paulson/Goldman conspiracy!
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Posted by: Zula on Mar 24, 2009 10:01 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The editors of Rolling Stone Magazine are part of the giant Paulson/Goldman Sachs conspiracy that Matt Taibbi rails against in his article, The Big Takeover! By sprinkling the article with profanity his editors all but guaranteed that Americans who most need to be informed will not read it! GET A CLUE! You NEED those evangelicals and right-wingers! You can't just rail profanely and expect to win over a majority! Otherwise a great informative piece!

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Original?
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Posted by: vhanudux on Mar 25, 2009 6:58 AM   
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This is a Rolling Stone article, not an Alternet article. Why are you publishing it in full?

Bad manners, Alternet.

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Barrings and Nick Leeson
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Posted by: cplot on Mar 25, 2009 10:45 AM   
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just as a reminder, Nick Leeson served 6-1/2 years in a Singapore prison for dumping Barrings Bank with a 1.4 billion derivative margin call. That's when many of us first heard the word “derivative”. Cassano has outdone Leeson and bilked AIG out of $250 million or more in compensation while leaving AIG with what could be hundreds of times more than Leeson. And rather than asking how much time he's going to serve, we're wondering whether he needs a bonus (like an after termination thank you). Oh how times have changed quickly.

Also, Taibbi writes:

“The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards.”

On Democracy Now Taibbi characterized this as some surprise that we have both "left" and "right" implicated. However, none of these names surprise me and it is somewhat disingenuous to refer to any of these as "left". Maybe if Bernie Sanders was on the list, it would be surprising.

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parrotuya
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Posted by: parrotuya on Mar 25, 2009 12:25 PM   
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Great expose by Matt "Tell it like it is" Taibi. He needs his on TV show just like Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher! Rachel analyzes, Bill makes us laugh and Matt growls at "the establishment!"

DOWn, baby, DOWn!

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DEMS & MELTDOWN--THE FINANCING OF LEECHES
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Posted by: SassyFrassy on Mar 25, 2009 1:44 PM   
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DERIVATIVES are what are used in hedge funds the driving force at the helm of the financial meltdown.

People most of the companies in the bailout are a form of a Madoff scheme for certain.

ENRON USED DERIVATIVES as well but coupled them with DUMMY CORPS.

what are DERIVATIVES---a type of risky gamble an insurance (whom cannot be called insurance otherwise they would have to be regulated by those in the insurance industry) so, they call them VEHICLES OR BETS which are sold to investment firms and they re-sell them.

the bet says that when a company FAILS they will be paid back--then they sell these insurance type BETS to companies.

Only in these BETS there the risky companies CREATED by those outside of USA whom HATE USA then these irresponsible USA Investment firms buy them NEVER CHECKING/NEVER CARING WHETHER they are a good investment for them then the IRRESPONSIBLE COMPANY tries to re-sell them. Only the GOOD INVESTMENT firms seeing they are no good---the GOOD INVESTMENT firms refuse to buy them.

Then the IRRESPONSIBLE investment firm is forced to sell all their OTHER good stock investments until all the IRRESPONSIBLE INVESTMENT firms have left in their companies are a hug compile of BAD DERIVATIVES at which time the IRRESPONSIBLE COMPANY is bankrupt and WASH DC SLUGS KNOWING THIS decided to tie a noose around the public neck CALLED by the name of bailout which will cause a NEVER ENDING STREAM OF MONEY out of the USA to the creators of these bad debts many of whom HATE USA -WHICH will bankrupt USA.

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DEMS & FINANCING LEECHES -PART B
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Posted by: SassyFrassy on Mar 25, 2009 1:47 PM   
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however,Thomas Jefferson pretty well covered much about our situation today in two quotes made by him over 200 years ago. Our founders fathers feared what we are living today:

1. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

2. "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."*



the problem with these DERIVATIVE BETS that are used in HEDGE FUNDS is that these IRRESPONSIBLE USA INVESTMENT FIRMS buy these BETS why??

A. firms are either IRRESPONSIBLE AND DON'T CHECK ON WHAT THEY ARE INVESTING IN, or
B. OR DON'T CARE THEY WILL JUST TAKE THE UNSUSPECTING PUBLICS bailout MONEY AND RUN
C. OR, these companies DO KNOW and DON'T CARE because they figure when the USA IS BANKRUPT it will wipe out all small/mid business sectors leaving 1 or 2 or several of the engorged companies in the marketplace gravytrained for life partying hearty while the small/med business sectors and publics livliehoods bites the dust forever.

Because the BAILOUT creates a NEVERENDING MONEYDRAIN OF PUBLIC FUNDS out of USA to the creators of these BETS (many of whom hate the USA. stop the bailout people to ALL COMPANIES.

It has been ALL the companies in the BAILOUT whom are involved in this type scenario NOT JUST AIG however, the problem is that ALL THE COMPANIES need to be sent back to the public sector OTHERWISE the noose around the publics neck whose name is THE BAILOUT will be DRAGGING THE USA public into bankruptcy and will be forced into a SOC/GLOB/COMM/MARX/FAC GOVERNMENT and no one will be able to have a hope of starting a small business and making a profit to live off for their family.

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DEMS & FINANCING OF LEECHES-PART C (final)
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Posted by: SassyFrassy on Mar 25, 2009 1:53 PM   
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It's important the PUBLIC seek LEGAL AND legislative action to OPPOSE THE BAILOUT. We must force these business to pay every dime back IN A TIMELY FASHION and restore these businesses to the PUBLIC SECTOR so that the SMALL bus/med business sector can participate in FREE ENTERPRISE.

why?? WE MUST STOP the gaping hole of neverending money trail of funds going back to these CREATORS OF THESE BETS (by the way many of whom 'want" to see America bankrupt because of the PUBLICS naivete of the unscrupulous nature of these BETS)

Do it for your children's sake otherwise there will be no hope for any young couple in love whom wishes to think about getting married and starting a new business and make it profitably work. IT WILL NEVER BE POSSIBLE IF THE PUBLIC doesn't show their determination to protect their CONSTITUTION. IN ADDITION, the 99 PERCENT of the public 'needs" to seek LEGAL AND LEGISLATIVE action to OPPOSE THE BAILOUT AND STIMULUS

To the present it's only one of the 1 % group of people attempting to destroy our Nation's economic systems.

WHY??? It was said to a VIP---that the reason the Socialists think they will win this time and are doing this is because ACLU and their DEMS SLUGS -- they don't think American's are " smart enough" to care to let their fingers do the walking/CLICKING to protect their lands, their CONSTITUTION or their freedoms. The DEMS and ACLU don't think the 99% of American's will be 'smart enough" to CARE about their country, their homes, their small business enough to