Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth

"Many americans wonder how this can possibly be"?

The idea that the banks were going to take the money we were giving them and lend it back to us was always stupid. No one should be surprised that they chose to use the funds to speculate in markets, then pay themselves huge bonuses. That's what modern investment banks are designed to do.

I know personally the underhanded and ouright lies and crooked tactics banks like Wells Fargo are using to force people into foreclosure rather than renegotiate.

The DLC "moderate" Dems owned by the banks are blinding themselves to how angry the public is regarding their assistance in helping to perpetuate massive financial fraud.

I know GS gave the most money to Obama, but if he isn't aggressive enough (he really needs to replace Geithner as this debacle goes on), he will forever be tied to enabling the pillage of this country by the banks.

http://www.amazon.com/Takes-Pillage-Bailouts-Backroom-Washington/dp/0470529598
snip<

Top Ten Ways Things Could Get Worse from Here
Amazon-exclusive content from author Nomi Prins
The government has nearly convinced the public they have everything under control, when that’s far from the case. In fact, everything could go downhill fast. Here are ten all-too-likely scenarios I look at in my book, It Takes a Pillage:

1. The actual bailout has quietly ballooned to $16 trillion dollars (not including over $3 trillion set aside for money market funds), most of it given out with no strings attached. Wall Street firms could continue to tout the myth that ‘talent’ must be paid for – now with stupid sums of bonus money, funded by the American People.

2. The stock market, which has rallied substantially since the government started giving out free money to the banking industry, could tank on the realization that if that money needed to be paid back any time soon, the banks wouldn’t be good for it.

3. Because bigger is better still seems to be Fed policy, JPM Chase could acquire Bank of America – Merrill Lynch, creating one of the largest, federally subsidized banking firms in the world.

4. Because the bigger just can’t help getting badder, JPM Chase could also acquire Citigroup, and we’d be living with a monopoly economy.

5. We could sink into the delusion that the Obama administration has actually done something to restrain Wall Street, lulling us into a false sense of security. Then the remaining big banks will screw us again.

6. Congress could continue to ignore history and never reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. That act made banks smaller, more specialized, easier to regulate and less expensive to bail out. Repealing it lead to this mess, and there’s barely a whisper heard in Washington of bringing it back.

7. As a Fed approved bank holding company, Goldman Sachs could buy a lot of small banks just to get access to all the money in savings and checking accounts to gamble with. Plus they’d have that great $250,000 FDIC guarantee they get per account. This would make them the biggest bank in the country.

8. Every bank and government agency with access to some aspect of a federal bailout could max out their subsidies chips at once – pushing the full bailout cost to over $26 trillion.

9. Many mid-sized and smaller banks didn’t need a bailout and have been better at allowing consumers access to credit. The largest banks, flush with federal funding and a poor record of helping average Americans, could buy them all up.

10. The Fed could continue to operate in secrecy, despite multiple moves by Congress to push for a full audit of its largesse. Right now, only the Fed knows what the real worst case scenarios might actually be....>snip

Remember that one?

There's only risk if there's downside. If you have the entire weight of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and the poor sucker American taxpayers guaranteeing your losses, you've got no risk.

nt

:shrug:

Wall Street wins. If Dems crack down campaign contributions will all go to Repubs. If Dems try to hang onto the campaign cash, that means they can't crack down. Either way Wall Street gets what it wants, and we're hosed.