Bush's push to "privatize" social security is a
desperate attempt to revalue the stock market and give
a temporary boost to the dollar (while rewarding his
cronies). It is another short-sighted "fix" that could
not only destroy what is left of our middle class but
in the long run the market itself.
I'm convinced (as I mentioned previously) that Kerry rushed
to concede because the markets were tumbling
after our fraudulent presidential election.
Bottom line:- ever since Reagan destroyed the U.S.
manufacturing base to usher in "free markets" and
transform US into a military Brobdingnagian we have
become a nation of gangsters.
(update 2) What I should have said was that the entire international finance system was being managed by crooks and scoundrels.
"How SEC Regulatory Exemptions Helped Lead to Collapse
Barry Ritholtz--Sep 18, 2008
Is Financial Innovation just another word for excessive and reckless leverage? Apparently so. As we learn this morning via Julie Satow of the NY Sun, special exemptions from the SEC are in large part responsible for the huge build up in financial sector leverage over the past 4 years -- as well as the massive current unwind Satow interviews the above quoted former SEC director, and he spits out the blunt truth: The current excess leverage now unwinding was the result of a purposeful SEC exemption given to five firms. You read that right -- the events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1.
So almost three years later, here we are. After scamming the public by pretending to create value out of air through means of spurious instruments comprised of esoteric bundles and magic-market derivatives, the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury (the man Goldman Sachs paid 18 and a 1/2 million dollars when he was nominated) proposes that we, the taxpayers, ameliorate the debt threatening to swallow the financial markets and cover for Bush's hand-picked cronies and thugs.
{Update addition} Go Kaptur!
Surprise, Surprise! (not!)
Paulson Debt Plan May Benefit Mostly Goldman, Morgan (Update2)
By Jody Shenn
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley may be among the biggest beneficiaries of the $700 billion U.S. plan to buy assets from financial companies while many banks see limited aid, according to Bank of America Corp.
``Its benefits, in its current form, will be largely limited to investment banks and other banks that have aggressively written down the value of their holdings and have already recognized the attendant capital impairment,'' Jeffrey Rosenberg, Bank of America's head of credit strategy research, wrote in a report dated yesterday, without identifying particular banks.
Now surely, if ever a system cried out for destruction, it is the Ponzi scheme that passes for financial wizardry on Wall Street. When the French chose to throw off their corrupted masters the workers made up the bulk of the Paris Guard and could stand in battle against the Bonapartist army. Unfortunately for us, whether by luck or sinister design, our National Guards are off fighting our imperial war in Iraq, and despite the separate loyalties of our quasi-autonomous states, I suspect that few, if any, would consider confronting the United States Army.
Given that reality, it seems that either our Democrats in Congress will discover the spines they misplaced in the early 80's or not only will we be saying "we are all socialists now" as Jonathan Alter of Newsweek quipped to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, but we will be begging to trade our dollars for yuan.
A year ago I regretted not having bought more euros, but now the rot has been spread through the entire system. So while some say Prussia, by annexing part of France in the 1870's, saved the French Commune and its valiant workers, our new Germans will not be offering much of a counter as they seem no less prone to a blind fling with Wall Street than our die-hard libertarians who see transparency as a plot against free enterprise.
Sadly, this is no longer 2005 and for the last eight years we have pretended a country can be run without competent management. Now the entire world is about to discover that wealth is neither produced by sheer might nor right out of thin air.
From Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel-Prize-winning Economist:
"America's financial system failed in its two crucial responsibilities: managing risk and allocating capital. The industry as a whole has not been doing what it should be doing - for instance creating products that help Americans manage critical risks, such as staying in their homes when interest rates rise or house prices fall - and it must now face change in its regulatory structures. Regrettably, many of the worst elements of the US financial system - toxic mortgages and the practices that led to them - were exported to the rest of the world."
Yet here comes Treasure Secretary, Paulson, after saying just last week that "no further bail-outs were warranted" seeking to extort 700 billion dollars from the government's coffers to be applied at his sole discretion:
His proposal's crowning paragraph reads like a bad joke:
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
We'll have to wait and see if Congress falls for it.
