March 22, 2009

Banking Crisis: Money-Spinning Operation for the Financial Giants

Obama Administration Plan for 'Toxic Assets:' a Windfall for Wall Street

March 23, 2009

World Socialist Web Site - The Obama administration is expected to provide more details today of its plan to enable Wall Street banks to offload up to $1 trillion of their bad mortgage loans and other "toxic" assets at public expense.

Over the weekend, the administration leaked to the press key features of the scheme, to be announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The press reports make clear that the plan is designed to provide a windfall for the very banks and investment firms which precipitated the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s by speculating on high-risk investments that generated extraordinary returns—until the housing and debt bubbles burst—and sustained the multi-million-dollar pay packages of Wall Street CEOs.

According to the reports, the plan will have three major components, all of which involve the use of taxpayer money to guarantee large profits for hedge funds, private equity firms and insurance companies who agree to use low-cost government loans to purchase virtually worthless mortgage loans and securities that are weighing down the balance sheets of the banks.

The government will put up as much as 97 percent of the cash to carry out the purchases and agree to absorb 75 percent or more of any losses that might result from the deals. At the same time, the government will expand a Federal Reserve program launched last week to revive the dormant market in asset-backed securities, otherwise known as the "shadow banking system," to enable the Wall Street billionaires who participate in the scheme to eventually repackage and resell the assets they take off of the hands of the banks at a substantial profit.

As for the banks, the plan will enable them to not only offload their failed investments at public expense, but profit handsomely from a resulting rise in the price of their stock...

Geithner Wants Private Sector to Buy Toxic Assets

March 22, 2009

Reuters - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Sunday that help from the private sector was critical to get toxic assets off banks’ balance sheets and help resolve a credit crisis...

Geithner's Toxic-Loan Solution Could Be Toxic for Banks

Geithner Readies Latest Bankster Debt Slavery Plan

March 21, 2009

Kurt Nimmo, Infowars - Allah be praised, we now have a plan for “troubled mortgages and related assets from financial institutions,” or so reports the New York Times. Little Timmy Geithner will unveil his “long-delayed plan” this coming week. “The plan is likely to offer generous subsidies, in the form of low-interest loans, to coax investors to form partnerships with the government to buy toxic assets from banks,” write the scribes.

Medea Benjamin, leader of the controlled opposition group Code Pink that receives millions from the Ford Foundation, tells the Financial Services Subcommittee what she thinks of Geithner. Even if Obama bounces Geithner, the bankster plan to enslave America will continue unabated.

In other words, Timmy and the banksters are going to stick it to you… again. Short of implementing this scam, the New York Times warns, toxic assets will continue to clog up the system and prevent normal lending.

Yves Smith calls this cobbled together rip-off a “private public partnership abortion program.”

Part three of this supposed strategy to unstuff the credit pipes is something called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, originally slotted to roll off the ramp in February. It is said TALF — you got to love these acronyms — will bestow “immediate benefits to students, to credit cards, to small businesses, to consumer loans,” according to Federal Reserve don Bernanke. Under TALF, the Fed will buy securities backed by different types of debt, including credit card, auto, student and small business loans.

It is reasoned that since the banks will not (cannot) lend to borrowers, the Fed has to step in and dole out loans, thus cranking the money supply up through the stratosphere.

Of course, this will simply add to the astronomical debt already piled up by the private bankers. The entire money supply consists of debt owed to the international bankers. I am reminded of something Sir Josiah Smith, director of the Bank of England, said in 1927: “…if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”

Geithner’s “private public partnership abortion program” is another bankster devised slavery program...

Socialism for Bankers and Hedge Fund Managers

Treasury's Toxic Asset Plan Could Cost $1 Trillion

March 22, 2009

AP - The Obama administration is using a multi-pronged attack to get at the heart of the nation's financial crisis — a mountain of toxic assets weighing on banks' balance sheets.

The plan developed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner aims to purchase as much as $1 trillion in troubled assets, utilizing the resources of the $700 billion bank bailout fund, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The initiative — details are set for release on Monday — will seek to entice private investors, including big hedge funds, to participate by offering billions of dollars in low-interest loans to finance the purchases and also sharing risks if the assets fall further in value...

Beware the Madoff Diversion!

March 19, 2009

Counterpunch - Simply put: Giant business and financial corporations govern. The few who run them make the governing decisions that dictate people’s work, living conditions, health and the nature of our communities...

Sure, Madoff and his ilk are major crooks. They’ve caused great harm to many people. There are laws aplenty to deal with such obvious crooks -- so they’ll end up in jail and good riddance. But after the Madoffs of every generation are all locked up, most of the corporate directors and managers who “legally” plunged the nation into these messes continue governing over the nation. They keep instructing people that the source of the nation’s problems is “greed and excesses” and “crooks.” They keep spending the people’s money to set things right. And they keep writing 'We the People’s' laws.

Isn’t that what’s happening today? Corporate directors and managers count on our being desperate to return to the way things were, on our not changing who’s calling the shots or the laws of the land which have long enabled a corporate class to rule...

A Program of Financial Concentration: Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

March 19, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts - Professor Michael Hudson (CounterPunch, March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests...

Senate Quietly Stripped Measure Restricting Bonuses from Bailout Legislation

March 18, 2009

Raw Story - A new revelation in the scandal surrounding AIG’s decision to pay multi-million dollar bonuses to executives — a provision that would have restricted companies receiving federal government bailout aid from paying bonuses was quietly stripped from a bill last month...

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