Wall Street’s Hostile Takeover of Main Street
Over the past several months, we have witnessed an unprecedented financial storm stirred up by the irrationally exuberant, Wall Street welfare parasites and their Fed-God, Ben Bernanke, and the usual enablers who roam the halls of the regime in power. It’s no fluke that according to the Chinese system of astrology, we’ve entered The Year of the Rat.
The federal bailout of negligent Wall Street firms is analogous to the government enacting laws that enable certain people to visit a casino, spin the roulette wheel, and pocket gobs of cash when they win—and if they lose, get subsidized so they can go back and do it all over again.
After two votes in Congress, and a week of disinformation, scare tactics, and threats, the glitterati of Wall Street have finally realized their ambition: They have managed a coup that enables them to occupy the halls of power, overseeing and manipulating the very financial markets that either make them or break them. Consider them “made” and the rest of us broke.
On Monday, September 29, the House originally rejected the bailout bill, with 228 brave “nays” stopping Bush & Co. in their tracks. As the week went on, congressmen were bought and bullied, and many lost their nerve. Tons of pork was tossed in to buy votes. Representative Gabrielle Giffords voted “nay” on Monday, but then her vote was purchased with some solar tax credits, which were added to the final version. Other morsels include auto-racing tracks, tax benefits for fishermen, welfare for rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and a healthcare provision forcing insurance companies to provide for specified mental health coverage.
When pork didn’t work, ultimatums were issued. Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, whose a
After the disquieting rejection of the first bailout attempt, the fearmongers from government, Wall Street, and assorted special interests went to work on the public. Pro-establishment analysts turned out in packs to appear on FOX, CNN, BubbleVision, and Bloomberg to circulate their scare tactics and frighten people into supporting the bailout. They sold the rescue of Wall Street’s financial class as a measure that would benefit America’s working class. Middle-class folks were told that there would be no cash available for small businesses, and this would lead to business owners being unable to make payroll, workers being laid off, and capital investments stalling in an illiquid market. Furthermore, a non-bailout scenario would imperil our 401k accounts and our pensions, leaving us penniless in old age. There were also the “experts” who told Americans they would no longer have easy access to cash for everyday household purchases due to credit markets clamping down.
The strategy was to convince Americans that a non-bailout would take away our free-spending standard of living and result in a series of catastrophic events that would destroy our families and the futures of our children.
Legislators everywhere declared that America was in a state of emergency, with sound evidence neither offered nor expected. The bailout and takeover of the financial system had to happen now, before the public had the time to form an educated opinion and assess the long-term consequences of such action.
In addition, Herr Bush has played a prominent crisis-mongering role. The president told us that the financial world would implode without his bailout, and worse, he stressed that the pact was beneficial for all of us on Main Street. You see, in BushSpeak, the bailout bill is actually an “investment,” something that will benefit the taxpayers who are robbed to supply Washington’s welfare stream. Bush has implied, on numerous occasions, that the tax dollars “invested” in shoddy assets owned by big banks will be paid back because this bailout will be a success. Since no profit or loss can be calculated in terms of a government redistribution of wealth, and because there’s no way to calculate a return of “investment,” how can “success” be quantified?
Bush, who often treads in the fog of the unknown, is explicitly suggesting that a compulsory redistribution of wealth will benefit the victims of the theft rather than the recipients of the booty.
But if the Fed’s bailout proposal is such a great idea, why are there no private investors who are willing to take on this exceptional opportunity? Why aren’t they lining up at the doors of big banks going belly-up?
As a part of the bailout scheme, Bush’s Treasury Secretary “Hank” Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs and an unelected cabinet secretary, has been granted unchecked powers to manipulate the financial markets. He named Neel Kashkari to head the new “Office of Financial Stability.” Kashkari is a Treasury guy and before that was a Goldman Sachs guy. Goldman Sachs is bailing out Goldman Sachs & Friends, and the Wall Street Elites are building a stronghold from which they will create all of the ground rules and hand out the goodies to preferential parties. When players play the game and make the rules as they go along, they don’t tend to lose. As a result, those who are empowered by favorable intervention will get richer, and the powerless middle class and poor can only get poorer.
The slicksters on Wall Street subsist by separating the folks on Main Street from their money. And now, with the bailout and unparalleled grab of power, Henry Paulson and his Wall Street posse have the full authority of law to commence unconstitutional actions, with no one to obstruct their arrangements. America’s founders, who believed that a system of checks and balances was necessary to deny potential despots, would have considered this to be tyranny.
Comments
The fact that the vultures are robbing the carcass does not mean it is not a carcass.
We have sent our industry to our cometitors, and have survived on smoke and mirrors for almost 3 decades. Full marks for that, that is quite an achievement.
Now its is time to let bury fairy tales like reaganism and friedmanism and the project for a new american century and a clean break and the end of history, and we make our own reality, because we just got got kicked by reality where it really hurts.
when the dust settles we need to get some grown ups in the room and figure out how we will restructure our economy and reinvent our culture.
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BTW:
The year of the rat is the time when a fresh start can be made, when the realist takes over, but then again lets not blame our stars because we are underlings..
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A good read and directly on point.
We have just been forced to buy a bunch of low value bank stock and we have had a rough past week for the market and there is more to come. Investors really need to make changes to their investing strategy if they have not already, especially since the market has not hit the bottom yet.. This means move money into T-bills and municipal bonds and invest some overseas to guard as a hedge against the coming inflation of the US dollar. I use offshore bank accounts for this and they have helped me. If you would like to learn more, feel free to visit my site.
Best,
Frank Miller
http://www.theoffshorebankaccount.com
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How refreshing that the lovely and insightful Karne DeCoster has come on board Taki’s magazine. It has started to take one the air of a confraternity of frustrated male penitents. She differs, of course, in being a bit more libertarian than some of the other writers. Viva la differance!
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I’ve been following this mess closely and it seems like every time I look into some aspect of this I run into Goldman Sachs. They constantly turn up like a bad penny.
That takes me to this. Seeing how Goldman Sachs has their hands all over the bail out (wealth transfer) and elsewhere, why don’t we simply abolish the Treasury department and outsource their functions to Goldman Sachs? We certainly don’t need any middlemen here and by doing so would give the Wall Street plutocrats more money to steal or waste.
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Great to see my pal Karen on the Taki site.
As a foreigner, I was amazed to read the following about Paulson.
“Paulson sold his 3.23 million shares in Goldman, worth about $500 million at the time, when he took the Treasury job, according to regulatory filings. He was exempted from paying capital gains tax on the sale of those stakes under a rule meant to avoid penalizing wealthy people who take government jobs and are forced to sell assets. “
(source)
Frankly with a system like this a billionaire would be mad not to go into politics!
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Good point about tyranny. In fact, I made the same point in my Amazon.com blog of October 10.
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the glitterati of Wall Street have finally realized their ambition: They have managed a coup that enables them to occupy the halls of power.
Exuse me, what coup? It’s been like that for a long time. This just makes more obvious? Will we stupid Americans (and others as well, so as not to discriminate) become wise? Somehow I doubt it. I don’t see any surge in popularity of third parties. That would at least make it obvious to the present Demoblican doupoly that the American people cannot be fooled all of the time.
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Welcome Karen De Coster ! :o)
An excellent article. You hit the nail on the head!
I read several blog and newspapers with various slants. When the conservatives and the progressives agree regarding the “takeover” (a much more descriptive term than
“bailout") you know that the American people are true target of
of the Wall Street and Globalistic elites!
The only (somewhat) silver lining of this mess will (hopefully) be
that neither the Obamamanics or the Neocons will be able to continue, unchecked, with their proposed programs of a total welfare state or increased military “adventures” abroad.
Am I being too optimistic ????
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Mr. Spencer...PLEASE an “edit” button.
TIA :o)
--Esmerelda Pearl
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Bravo to Ms. Coster, who grasps the free market. It is NOT to blame for this godawful mess. We now have a stronger version of what we have had since the 70s--a corporate socialist state. Be warned of the bloggers out there, Ms. Coster, who don’t understand laissez-faire; they are legion.
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The plan to bailout the economy was certainly aimed to correct their own mistakes caused by their greed. The leadership should have never offered to help these intitutions.
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An excellent description of what is actually happening in Washington, and from what I can see from the reactions in Europe, pretty much in the rest of the Western world.
Our “best congress money can buy” is giving these parasites of the financial world unchecked power over our national debt, which undoubtedly will end with a burden on our children and grandchildren that is nothing short of involuntary servitude. When will we have reached the threshold of pain where the American people say “no more” and withdraw the “consent of the governed”? Or is the general American populace dumbed down sufficiently not to notice how they are being fleeced?
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This is the crux of the howl, the oft-repeated cause of the financial imbroglio is that laissez faire and the so called “Free Market” has failed. We need “new regulation” according to our now-chastened Regulators. If the Government-Industry Bunko Operation we’ve had over the last 16 years is laissez faire then I’ll eat a bucketful of Zimbabwean Dollars.
Now, as they socialize everything they can get their hands on, we’ll see a real demolition derby in action.
“Free Market”.....yea right, there is gullible and then there is gullibleomania
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I for one, welcome our new Goldman Sachs overlords.
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The madia panic created over the financial “crisis” to convince the public on the need for the bailout, is frightenly similar to the panic that was created over “weapons of mass destruction” misinformation campaign that got the public to support the invasion of Iraq.
Kill your television set, it’s just an instrument of control, not information.
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A government of Goldman Sachs, by Goldman Sachs, and for Goldman Sachs.
All is not doom and gloom, gents, after all, in our soon mutual bondage we will be able to experience the joys of male bonding.
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‘Male bonding” or getting porked when picking up the soap?
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...excuse me....when picking up the tab.....gotta keep my back firmly against the wall when bending over...yes, yes...it’s almost like being in England....oh my....
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Hamilton started the destruction..
Lincoln solidified it
Bush finished it
The US hasn’t been the US since the War Over States Rights the people lost, and we now live in a dreamland
lying to ourselves that we even have a constitutionally controlled republic. What we don’t live in a democracy..NO and thank goodness.
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This is a massive, no-holds-barred
rush to impose world government.
I ask folks to extrapolate from one
clue among many: Greenspan
had openly, publicly advised pro-
spective home-buyers to take out
an ARM, in 2006.
He not only had violated his chair-
manship duties by giving such ad-
vice, but had dropped a HUGE
clue that the Federal Reserve
wished to create a MASSIVE
financial collapse--worldwide!--
so that it could gather far more
power and influence in our
day-to-day business than it
would otherwise have--if such
an extreme expansion of
risk-drenched home owner-
ship had not occurred!
Paulson has become KING of
banking, wielding unprece-
dented power through our
so-called “we the people”
Congress!
The Founding Fathers would
have raised an army to stop
such a thing.
And so it goes in our deadly
Orwellian Age; and there’s
no place to hide, Bill.
-Rick
P.S.
Here’s a bit of confirmation of my opinion:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/102559/the_woman_who_could_have_prevented_this_financial_mess_was_silenced_by_greenspan,_rubin_and_summers/
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If anyone still believes in voting, don’t worry about pulling the switch for McBama (cause they’re both evil). Just make sure to vote against your congress person if they supported this mess. They are spineless, vultures, who are delivering power to the Executive Socialist regime. And they ought to be gotten rid of ASAP.
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Is it National Socialism yet? Can we expect thugs and hired felons breaking down our front doors? Can we abolish the Fed? If the 3rd army is on the streets, is it fascism? If we have fascism, will I still have a job? Will I have health insurance? What will happen to my kids?
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i think we should heve a counstatutional convention n elect a new congress.rule#1.illeagle 2 use the word social.rule #2.no one is allowed 2get 2big to fail.no more rules
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The bailout is the ultimate default swap.
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