I call bullshit on the bailouts. Before, I was open to them, now I call BULLSHIT. Do a little research and you'll find that AIG received bailout funds because one of the architects of these bailouts actually stood to benefit financially if AIG survived instead of going under.
Goldman Sachs, it turns out, was Cassano's biggest customer, with $20 billion of exposure in Cassano's CDS book. Which might explain why Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein was in the room with ex-Goldmanite Hank Paulson that weekend of September 13th, when the federal government was supposedly bailing out AIG.
When asked why Blankfein was there, one of the government officials who was in the meeting shrugs. "One might say that it's because Goldman had so much exposure to AIGFP's portfolio," he says. "You'll never prove that, but one might suppose."
Market analyst Eric Salzman is more blunt. "If AIG went down," he says, "there was a good chance Goldman would not be able to collect." The AIG bailout, in effect, was Goldman bailing out Goldman. " ~ Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print)
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
I've been labeled a cynic and this just proves my point: America has been bought and paid for by powerful billionaires who play with the country's money as if it were a game of monopoly. You'll notice that Joe Cessano of AIG is in his mansion, keeping all the pretend money he made. The profits for AIG weren't real, hence the assets weren't real, yet Joe's bank account is real. Does that make sense to anybody?
To a certain degree, I understand why letting big, powerful banks fail would hurt us in the short term. But I don't understand why allowing the same companies who bought and sold bad debt to investors and a made billions from it are allowed to 1) keep the money they made and 2) receive more money and less incentive to be responsible with it.
The bad thing is, we can't throw them in jail because, believe it or not, what they did wasn't illegal. 20 years ago, it was. But not today. The Democrats, in a half-wit move in the early 90's, were so desperate to get back into Congress that they decided to be more "big business friendly." So they lifted many of the regulations from the banking industry and the selfish, gluttony banking CEO's used this opportunity to 1) get rid of any competition 2) buy up the needed legislators in Washington and 3) run a ponzi scheme that could have very well destroyed our economy for good.
Thanks a lot, Congress. I appreciate it. Go fuck yourselves.
And now, we're being told that to save our economy, we have to give billions of dollars to the very companies that did us in. And even that I could understand if there was massive reform going on as well. There isn't. These companies are receiving the money with little to no restraints, the deregulation hasn't been reversed on Wall Street, and they're doing what I feared they would do: they spent it on themselves.
Great. Just great.
Now Washington is trying to rack up private investors, whom they won't identify (dear god, we're not taking money from terrorists, are we?), and the Feds, the most unconstitutional government body I've ever seen, are pumping trillions of unaccounted for dollars into the economy. Where is it going? They won't say. Where is it coming from? They won't say. And get this: The Feds aren't accountable.......TO ANYONE.
Congress and the President have no authority over what the Feds do. This is scary shit. Because if the current economic crisis has taught me one thing, it's this: Self-interest rules and fuck everybody else.
And you and I are everybody else.
