Feeling sorry for yourself? Struggling to get by? Wondering how you can get a bailout? Well, stop moping, because it's not too late!
I may not have Suze Orman's verve or Billy Mays' voice. But I've discovered a revolutionary risk-free investment plan straight from those who brought us the economic meltdown. So in this column-fomercial, I won't waste your time with Ginsu knives or cash-for-timeshare schemes -- I'm going to help make you rich beyond your wildest dreams!
What seems most immediately alarming about the bailouts and the $787 billion stimulus, write Leo Hindery and Donald Riegle in the April 20 issue of The Nation,
are the countless indications that the rescue packages still fall
woefully short of what is needed to confront the emergency economic
conditions we face.
Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is
convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall
Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn't he be cut in on the
loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed
into law when he was Bill Clinton's treasury secretary? No one has been
more persistently effective in paving the way for the financial
swindles that enriched the titans of finance while impoverishing the
rest of the world than the man who is now the top economic adviser to
President Obama.
A
cartoon in the Sunday comics shows that mustachioed fellow with monocle
and top hat from the Monopoly game -- "Rich Uncle Pennybags," he used
to be called -- standing along the roadside, destitute, holding a sign:
"Will blame poor people for food."
Two weeks ago, I posted an
article showing how the Geithner-Summers banking plan could potentially
and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth
from taxpayers to banks.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants to have the government lend up to a trillion dollars to hedge funds, private equity, funds and the banks themselves to clear their books of toxic assets. The plan implies a substantial subsidy to the banks. It is likely to result in the disposal of these assets at far above market value, with the government picking up the losses.
As much as we all want to help out the Wall Street bankers in their hour of need, taxpayers may reasonably ask whether this is the best use of our money.
Tim Geithner said on Sunday's Face the Nation that
the Treasury might fire the heads of big banks that depend on financing
from the federal government, just as it summarily deposed Rick Wagoner,
the former CEO of General Motors -- and before Wagoner, the heads of
AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. "Where that requires a change in
management and the board, then we will do that," said Geithner.
America is devolving into a third-world
nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite's rapacious looting
of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which
can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be
helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a
robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily
guarded gated communities where they will have access to security,
goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us.
The Obama administration's $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America's ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win - and taxpayers lose.
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
The good news on the government's "No
Banker Left Behind" program is that according to the special inspector
general's report on Tuesday, the total handout to date is still less
than 3 trillion dollars. It's only 2.98 trillion to be precise, an
amount six times greater than will be spent by federal, state and local
governments this year on educating the 50 million American children in
elementary and secondary schools.
The bad news is that even greater amounts of money are to be thrown down what has to be the world record for rat holes.
