As far back as 2004 the FBI was already calling what was going on in the Banking and mortgage industry a huge epidemic of fraud, but nothing was done about it by the regulators. Indeed, SEC looked the other way as people like Bernie Madoff made off will over 50 billion dollars in his Ponzi scheme.
The manner in which Wall Street and the Bankers were able to continue this epidemic of 'liar loans' and controlled fraud is difficult at best to fully comprehend.
And the 'spin' that the media and Wall Street love to spread out in the world is that no one 'really' realized how bad things were going to get until it was all too late. That is the biggest lie of all.
Rarely have I seen what has now become known as the 'greatest Heist' of the Century (and perhaps the entire history of the world) explained in such an amazing and understandable manner.
I realize that the video is long, but I can tell you this: if you take the time to watch it, you will never feel the same and will empower yourself with the knowledge that evil....pure unadulterated evil lives and breaths on a daily basis in our country on Wall Street, and then you will begin to understand the depth of depravity that was really behind the Bush/Hank Paulson bailout and how, they knew without a doubt exactly what they were doing.
You won't be fooled again, I can assure you that. There is a short introduction from a man before William Black comes on to speak. Enjoy the video, and I would welcome anyone's views.
When I see how Wall Street and the Banks have turned our taxpayer dollars into billion dollar bonuses, and rub our faces in their continued arrogant criminal behavior, as Congress and President Obama look the other way, I cannot help but say to myself:
That money they stole - that could have been and should have been our money for a decent Universal Health Care Plan, and instead, these crooks and liars are allowed to continue, without abatement 'Business as Usual.' An example of how these crooks are continuing to use the TARP money to pay themselves insane bonuses they feel they deserve for bringing our country to it's knees:
"Citigroup Inc's contract with energy trader Andrew Hall, which reports say could pay him up to $100 million this year, will not be subject to rulings by the Obama administration's pay Czar, a source close to the bank said on Wednesday."
-Reuters
If ever we needed proof that the Obama administration really doesn't want to change the way Wall Street does business, this is it. Allowing Citigroup to shell out $100 million dollars to a contracted trader makes a mockery of any efforts to reign in executive pay and put an end to the fantasy finance casino that wrecked our economy.
We were led to believe that the Pay Czar would review all compensation packages and keep them at a reasonable level. Although the Obama Administration ditched the $500,000 cap, it "felt that in cases where we're offering exceptional government assistance that we had a duty to the taxpayer to ensure that, even if the letter of the law had no restriction on overall salary, that there needed to be a review process to ensure that it was neither excessive, inappropriate or oriented to short term risk taking," said Gene Sperling, a senior counselor to Mr. Geithner in a June 11th Wall Street Journal report.
Everyone knew there would be loopholes, but if $100 million is not "excessive, inappropriate or oriented to short term risk taking" nothing is. Apparently, since the contract was executed before February 11, an arbitrary date set by the Treasury Department, it is exempt. But what's so special about February 11th? By then we had already provided Citigroup more than $387 billion dollars in loans and asset gurantees, according to the excellent accounting provided by Nomi Prins. Of that $45 billion came from the TARP program in November 2008, well before Andrew Hall's contract. If the taxpayers had not bailed out Citigroup, Mr. Hall would have received bupkis. In fact, had we not bailed out Wall Street in general, Mr. Hall and many others financiers might be selling apples on the street-corner. (See The Looting of America for a detailed account of how we got here.)
I don't care what lame excuses the Czar or Citigroup come up with, Mr Allen is being paid with our money. He's walking off with a hundred million and for what? What value did he add to our economy? Just want did he do to help re-employ the more than 25 million who are now unemployed or underemployed?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The reality of just how interconnected the Wall Street/Bankers 'Heist' and our current fight for a decent universal health care plan is something that few talk about. The idea that one does not affect the other is naive. A recent article on that subject highlights how these two facts are intertwined:
What is needed now? First, we need government action to claw back the ill-gotten 2008 bonuses. All nine of the banks covered in the Cuomo Report received TARP funding. All have depended on government largesse in other ways as well, including transfers from AIG, itself bailed out by the government, and cheap loans from the Fed. A recent Financial Times story explained that this year's Wall Street profits are also padded by what is essentially insider trading with the Fed in the market for U.S. Treasuries. As Paul Krugman has rightly emphasized in his recent New York Times columns, the banks' wins have been our losses. Even if the banks are making profits again, they have polluted the world's financial system with trillions of dollars of losses incurred by the rest of society, and owe the renewed profits significantly to taxpayer largesse.
First, let's recall (if we need reminding!) that $33 billion is a rather meaningful sum to pay out to some thousands of people. After all, in a world of extraordinary hunger and suffering, all of the rich world combined recently promised a total of $20 billion over three years to relieve the plight of hundreds of millions of people in the world's hungriest farm households. Yet here is $33 billion in a single year for some thousands of bankers in nine banks during a catastrophic year. The $33 billion per year, or $330 billion over a decade, would also pay for roughly one third of the extension of health insurance to the 46 million or so uninsured Americans. In short, we will suffer a huge lost opportunity, as well as a blow to social justice, if Washington simply winks cynically at the "finality" of these unjustified bonuses.
Second, let us reject the view that bank compensation is in any event a matter to be left solely to the banks' shareholders and management. As Prof. Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School has rightly emphasized in the Financial Times and elsewhere, even if bank shareholders were to gain a better control over management compensation than they have now, the shareholders and managers actually would still share the incentive to gamble recklessly in view of the government guarantees and expected future bailouts. Bank shareholders will not adopt bonus schedules that protect the public from the excessive risk-taking of the banks. Only bank regulators can do that.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And, the biggest lie of all the lies from Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve:
"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."
After viewing the video of William Black you will understand that not only did Wall Street and the Banks know exactly what they were doing, but let's remember this: They are still doing it, and no one is protecting Americans....no one.