Hank Paulson is only a hero in his own warped dreams. He is an economic criminal who should be in prison. His pal Tim Geithner is also an economic criminal who should be his cellmate. Shame on both of them!

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It began under Reagan with David Stockman's "voodoo economics" that spawned the Reagan "revolution." Alan Greenspan chimed in with is raid on the Social Security Trust fund and deregulation courtship aided immensely by the smug little bastard from Texas, Phil Gramm. The array that followed led us to Paulson and Bernanke and now Obama and Geithner, Paulson's lackey. This Wall Street crowd has earned lynching only and the end of corporate capitalism but the outcry here is only a whisper, while in the UK the same ilk of scumbags face heavy assault and accountability. They scorn "voodoo economics," we embrace it, reward it and cower in fear of its' perpetrators. So much for governance "of, by and for the people."

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Paulson should be in prison forfeiting his assets ... but , since he has a no prosecution deal that won't happen ...

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Matt, you hit the nail on the head. If these pricks don't end up at Leavenworth alongside Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Gonzales, with Obama tucking the key in his pocket, then there is no justice.

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with your article is there is no word profane or vile enough for you to use. Wait! I was wrong, there is one...BANKER!

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The rabid right has been frothing at the mouth because Sonia Sotomayor claimed that a wise Latina woman would make better decisions than a white male, calling it a "racist" comment. But Matt Taibbi shows that it's not racist at all, but clear truth.

Would Sotomayor have done what Paulson did? Or what Greenspan did? Or what Cheney, Bush and Rummy did? No wise Latina woman would have supervised our financial meltdown or got us into unwinnable wars in Vietnam and Iraq. All these debacles were engineered by white men. Give me a wise Latina woman any day.

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The indictment set forth in this article needs to take one very important step beyond what it is saying. Paulson is guilty of criminal fraud and should be prosecuted and placed in jail for life. Everyday criminals get life sentences for stealing much much less. It is time that people in power who steal much much more be dealt with in the same way.

go to 911insidejob.net for many articles and videos

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'cos if you do, and I believe you do, you need to take the excrement out of your eyes and take a strong steady look at the presence of nanothermite in the WTC dust. It sure ain't the only odd thing about 911, but it's as steady a handle on this thing as there ever was.

Don't worry, we'll forgive you your past ignorance on the matter.

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Please that 2 1/2 page Day Glo Crayon written Death Threat/Ransom note was scribbled out 6 months prior to the ultimate meltdown. Seems to me that proves not only foresight but intent with malice.
He not only saw it coming, he had enough foresight to realize it would be a great opportunity to extort (more) money from the US Taxpayers. He did nothing BUT pull out his Crayola Crayon box, sharpen the Blood red one and draw the picture of a collapsed US (thus global) economy.
In fact since so many other countries rely on US for Aid and commerce, He and Berenke et al actually committed a Crime against Humanity. How many poor nations have lost US aid dollars, charitable donations now that our Gov't and our citizens are broke? How many industrialized nations are spiralling downwards because we are no longer able to be the mass consumers we once were?
Paulson is yet another who should be prosecuted and executed for High Crimes.

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Unfortunatly, as luck would have it the American people have a hard time remembering who hanky pants is much less what he did. That short attention span is depended on in the cirle jerk that scumbag Paulsen belongs to.Now when does the Revolution start ?

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blabbering on about old news with no mention of Geithner and the crimes taking place today. I guess Matt has appeal to the same schmucks that still believe the despotism was going to end when Bush left the white house.

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... Oh! Oh! Ari Fleischer?

lol! :D

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then I will know that change is coming.

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I think you can chose a better descriptive than "prick"!

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Putting Hank Paulson in charge of the TARP bailout is like putting Mrs. O'Leary's cow in charge of the Chicago Fire Department.

Isn't this just another Orwellian case of "War is peace, ignorance is strength"? Or is it some sort of "sympathetic magic" - like cures like - magical thinking?

There is no question in my mind that if we truly lived in a representative democracy with the rule of law, Hank Paulson would be disposessed, tried for fraud, and whatever resources he had would be used to pay restitution to his victims.

But in reality, we live in a kleptocracy - rule by thieves. Our representatives are pretty much all tainted and they will see to it that the current system of campaign financing does not change, since it so heavily favors the incumbent.

The assertion that "Hank" is somehow a hero is laughable. But then again, there are some who feel John Dillinger is also a hero!!

Veritas ab Comoedia
Pope Urban XXIII

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Certainly Hank Paulson played a major role in bringing down the economy, but I'm also curious about the huge increase in the price of oil that occurred in the spring and summer of 2008, only ending with the collapse of October, 2008. This was the last opportunity for the Bush family oil interests to make some huge money off of the George W. Bush Presidency. I think they took full advantage of this opportunity to the extent of bringing down the world economy.

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who played a crucial role in architecting the current economic mass.

What about these pricks Matt?

Timmy Geitner
Robert Rubin
Lawrence Summers
Volack

Obama is willing to break industries that do actual manufacturingm, yet keeps pumping tax dollars to his IB masters. That makes Obama the Head-prick.

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... a brand-new, state-of-the-art, million dollar artificial leg.

After we bombed his home and family to smithereens.

Former CIA George Tenet gets the Medal of Freedom after letting Bushco invade & occupy Iraq, with plans to "Transform the Middle East" into a western democracy.

Former NSA Chief Condoleeza Rice gets promoted after failing to prevent 911. And continued to fail as Secretary of State.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan gets Knighthood by the Queen of England, just before the Next Great Depression. Leading to a third WW?


Corporate CEO's and staff give each other huge bonuses, while companies fail & go bankrupt.

Business as usual.

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Perhaps it's just too abstract for the type of wacko who would run off and whack somebody but I am surprised that these Bankers are still breathing.

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Everything he says is true. Why would we care?

News flash:

THE REPUBLICANS ARE OUT OF POWER. DEMOCRATS are in charge now. Paulson doesn't matter. It would be news if he were being prosecuted - big news, because it would mean the Dems were getting real.

Let's hear about Geithner.

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like an ENTIRE NATION & ECONOMY BUILT ON CORRUPTION & INTERNATIONAL FRAUD...

& its propagandic media drumbeat of American Exceptionalism

HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

PUHleeze!

that money GOT STOLEN YEARS AGO...

the simple transaction that helped KEEP AMERICAN BUSINESS in the LOOP WITH INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS WHO GOT DEFRAUDED BY AMERICAN LACKADAISICAL BUSINESS OVERSIGHT BY GOVERNMENT

was simply a *delay* on payback for the theft that occurred

PAY YOUR FUCKING BILLS you collectively racked up from *not giving a shit* until the bill came due!

the entire NATION was complicit in FRAUD
upon its own citizens & THE REST OF THE WORLD

don't sit there all shocked & stunned because you let your croney governments remove all oversight & protections for foreign & domestic investors.

you think we're pissed off NOW?

hell, you ONLY CREATED TWO GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSES IN UNDER A CENTURY...

watch how fast we'll get pissed off if you keep up with this shit that drags the Rest of Us down with you...

you're already killing people, Balkanizing, torturing, defrauding...

investigating, cataloguing, restricting movement in international citizens' rights to travel...

& we're supposed to point fingers over how Paulson is the 'whole problem'? oh come on...

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They are't finished yet? I get the feeling that it is all about bringing in the New World Order where we are all subject to the their will. A one world under the direction of the elite rich that have manipulated our money into their control leaving us with monstous debt and servitude.

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you sound upset.

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Where are Superman, Batman, the X-Men, etc. when we need them? How do we the taxpayers get justice for the many wrongs done to us by Paulson, Geitner and the heads of AIG and the robber banks?

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is that Obama's real motive in trying to close down tax-havens is as the prelude to going after Paulson and all the other criminals' assets, leaving nowhere for them to hide their plunder (or keep it hidden) when the FBI comes knocking.

As I said, it's a fantasy - but it's such a nice one.

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I think the worst people you could put in charge of a failing economy are two of the architects of its demise. Geithner was in the room with Paulsen when Bush was still pres and Geithner negotiated the AIG fiasco.

You can't fix a failing economy merely by printing more money. Inflation and unemployment are going to kill us in the next few years. This economy is not getting better. We have fitted it with a truss who seams are bursting as we speak. We've propped up on a table a man with no legs or buttocks with which to sit or stand--and he's bleeding all over the place. The humane thing to do is kill this corrupt and greedy economy and rebuild it so there aren't so many loopholes for get rich quick schemes (like CDOs, MBSs, credit swaps, etc).
We are going to suffer, regardless. Might as well get something righteous done in the mean time. Geithner is just Paulsen Jr., and Summers is Rubin, Jr. And Rubin? He's just a Madoff who hasn't been caught yet.

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But blue berry and purple girl have a better grasp of the situation. This debacle is decades in the making. Paulson was just a bagman to move middle class wealth in to the hands of the financial elites. It is frustrating to me that so few people seem to be connecting the dots; the American middle class was slated for destruction as far back as 1970 when Bretton Woods began to unravel. Rockefeller's Trilateral commission is implicitly on the record stating such. Stagflation was the end of (over)mature capatilism in the west. (Capitalism really died in the great depression, it has simply been proped up by military spending and economic bubles since then, with the arguable exception of some real growth in the 1950s and 60s). Financial deregulation (gaming the system) began to be set up under Reagan. The encouragment of indebtedness was foisted on Americans by Madisen Avenue hucksters; Wall St. was fully deregulated in 1999 at the behest of Robert Rubin, another Goldman-Sachs alum, along with the neferious Phil Graham. Then Greenspan obligingly inflated the housing bubble; the bankers and mortgage lenders made trillions in fees and commissions with the now lawless, unregulated banks aided by the fraudulent complicity of the credit rating agencies dumped these junk "securities" on the public. The bankers get their fees and commissions up front, buy some of each other's junk and then get rewarded again with taxpayer bailouts. Is it not clear to everyone that this has been meticulously planned and orchestrated for decades from behind the scenes? Obviously Obama is complicit in this with Geithner as the new bagman. Obama is in Wall Street's pocket; he is going along with Wall Street's ongoing theft of the public coffers. He does not give a damn about the middle class. If he did, either Stiglitz or Krugman would be Sec. of Treasury and this deepening economic crises would have been mitigated if not averted. Most people have no understanding(I leave Alternet readers, obvioulsy better informed than most, out of this accusation)of how dire the economic situation is. There is a considerable amount of evidence, for those willing to look, that at least some of the elites behind this debacle would like to see a kind of return to feudalism, a doing away with pesky enlightenment principles such as the Bill of Rights and Habius Corpus and universal access to higher education (which I am seeing taken away right before my eyes as I write this in the late great state of California). To make the "serfs" ignorant and subservient servents to their "betters". Think it can't happen? Somebody, please convince me.

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It doesn't matter what someone say's about Paulson. It's about time you Democrats learned the real truth about who ruined our economy! Visit this URL and watch the viedo. You'll learn the truth. And the villians are still in the house!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1

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As if the WSJ would publish your letter.

Last week, they had an article of how "millionaires were disappearing from Maryland tax roles" because of the increased tax rates...yet when I read the article, it stated quite clearly that it was unknown if the "missing" millionaires had in fact moved out of state, or had just fallen from the ranks of millionaires because of the bad economy.

I wrote a letter to the editor, asking "where the beef was" if they were acknowledging they had no clue if any millionaires had in fact fled the state because of taxes.

My comment didn't get published, but hundreds of comments talking about how the tax increase was another "liberal failure" sure did. Go figure.

Everyone knows Paulsen is a scamming low-life, a con man deluxe.

"News" will be when he gets tarred, feathered and run out of the country on a rail.

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is there an ad for WWII Commando at the beginning of this story? Alternet, don't allow this type of crap on your website,isn't there enough war to go around?

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Matt, If you choose to see the glass half full--in your case 1/4 full--what can I say. Ye of little faith. You'll see in a couple decades, we'll turn this around.

Everyone will be living in Dubai-in-the-sky splendor with leafy-green planty-things hanging from their balconies and--commodities-schummodities--we'll be living on the flat of the lamb, high on the hogwash and happy as bugs, yes bugs eating rug.

Paulson is but one of many in the cannon of saintly banqueurs. I fear, I erred in neglecting to beatify Bishops Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers as well as Msgr. T. Geitner, praised be their holy names. AMEN Evan

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I thought said: "or a horse with a head of lettuce"

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I think the only people who care about prosecuting the war and economic criminals are the people who write and read at alternet and a few other progressive blogs.

I bet many many of the irate here voted for Mr. Obama thinking he was a progressive and would have "change we can believe in."

Bad on ya, suckers. You got fooled again.

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The supposedly "progressive" Portland, OR city council has voted to give Paulson's son, Merritt, millions in public money to - get this - rebuild PGE stadium to make it "soccer specific" AND build a new AAA baseball stadium here! Little Lord Paulson (as we call Merritt here) just purchased a MLS franchise (to upgrade the Timbers to MLS) and now "requires" a replacement venue for the AAA Beavers that he also owns. They are proposing to take the entire URA budget for a low-income area called Lents here in order to give Paulson the money to build his new ballpark there. Disgusting.

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How do we get pricks like Paulson out of the public arena? How do we lessen the socially corrosive influence and outright financial piracy of companies like Goldman Sachs? How in hell do we stop ourselves being used as pawns to be continuously financially raped and pillaged by rapacious corporations? Is it going to take a French Revolution-style uprising? These disgusting people like Paulson, and insanely avaricious companies like Goldman Sachs, have consolidated their power so completely in the last eight years that currently it seems not to matter what anyone says or does – including our new "vunderkind" president. By early indications, he is trying his might, but the entrenched power brokers are rolling over him, too.

If We The People cannot stop what has been so aptly named by Jon Stewart as our "Clusterf**k To the Poorhouse," then we are finished, done, over as a democratic nation. On our present course, we are sailing into a future like that of today's Brazil (and other countries), where even the few of the middle class have to surround their homes with razor wire and armed guards to defend against the impoverished (and pissed off) masses, and where modern cities are surrounded by miles and miles of fetid, squalid Favelas/ghettos. Just try to imagine how pissed off the destroyed middle class of our nation are going to be when (not if) they are forced into poverty from a life of comfort. I shudder at the thought. It is one thing to have grown up in a Favela with a history of poverty; it is something else altogether to be shoved down into poverty and dispair after having tasted a comfortable life.

We spend our time (or are incessantly told by media to spend our time) wringing our hands and twisting our panties over every minor quasi-threat from Them Over There; but we had better take a closer look at what is happening right here at home.

Thomas Jefferson once said that a revolution every once in awhile is a good thing; and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – more dangerous to a society than a person (or people) with nothing left to lose. These two concepts coming together (as I believe they are, slowly but inexorably) is something we had better pay attention to.

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most dumb-ass editorial page ever! Not worth reading unless you want to know just what the current propaganda push is.
Matt, the rant was good and sorry to say, changes nothing...

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While the facts in this article are correct and make a powerful case for the author's argument, his use of vulgar and coarse language causes his argument to loose force. The use of precise vocabulary would certainly lend a more intelligent cedibility to this piece. As it is written, it appears as disgruntled rantings. I wanted to use this article to make a point in a discussion about the source of our present and future economic condition, but the language made that impossible.

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--------------->

Capitalist do not create one iota of wealth (meaning surplus-value in the form of profit, interests, rent, etc.,) They do appropriate this from production and reproduction
within the capitalist modality of economic organization.

SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOR, as TIIME, and living
ENERGY, is the economic source of ALL VALUE: it is the origin of social wealth, all profit, all revenue, and all values that the parasites and leeches from Wall Street and the Banking monopoly along with the Captains of industry and trade give to themselves in the form of outrageous salaries, vast holdings, exorbitant bonuses, and that specific class of income called “capital gains.”

Ben Franklin said: “The workmen and slave create both the total value and total surplus value for the capitalist property holders on the plantation and in the factories held
as “property” by the master and by moneybags. The process of labor alone has the unique charm being the creation of wealth out of nothing but a fat ass, hard work, and much sweat.”

In KAPITAL, Vol. 1. Marx wrote: “The action of labor power not only reproduces it own value, but produces value over and above it. This surplus value is the difference between the value of the product and the value of the elements consumed in the formation of that product, in other words, of the means of production and the labor power [Bound together at the moment a commodity is actuated by the act of exchange].

The Banksters do not have ”productive role” in this process > they are parasites that live off their derivatives and credit swaps schemes -for the sole purpose of padding their bonuses and vast salaries that are completely based on theft and nothing more.

Capitalist don't want a “free ride” from the economy because they already have it.

The rich express a “gimme, gimme” attitude towards the rest of us and towards the world they seek to subject to their Empire.

Obama’s Geithner, Summers, Paulson, Rubin; along with Billy Clintonoid, George W. Bush, Allan Greenspan and Paul Volker -and a few other billionaires- should be behind
bars looking-out at the economy they have systematically destroyed!

A. Z. Arrow

---------->

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for a guillotine...

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