Billions for contributors, a few red cents for the rest

Over the past couple of years Goldman Sachs and other big contributors to the politicians down in Washington have bought up tens of billions of dollars worth of so called "toxic assets" at very large discounts from the banks and other institutions that originally bought them at face value.

It's almost as though Goldman Sachs and George Soros and the other big money political contributors knew something was in the works to make those "toxic assets" smell as sweet as the sea breeze off the Horn of Africa.

Starting in November, just before the election, the politicians and their bagmen conveniently made a plan to buy up those toxic assets at face value with your tax dollars. The architects of that plan were (big surprise!) Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank appointees who spent long careers with Goldman Sachs, and various other speculative companies controlled by George Soros and other big contributors to the politicians. Those bagmen (Rahm Emmanuel almost surely collected and counted the small bills for President Obama; I don't know who picked up the suitcases of loot for President Bush - his bribery collecting mechanism is less obvious) worked closely with Barney Frank, Chairman of the House of Representatives' Banking Committee and Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

The hundreds of billions of tax dollars that are providing windfalls ($13 Billion for the 100 partners who own Goldman Sachs, for instance - $130 Million each) are being laundered through AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The chief guys who set up the laundering program are Ben Bernanke, appointed by President George W. Bush, and Timothy Geithner, appointed by President Barack H. Obama.

Goldman Sachs partners and their employees contributed about $6 Million in officially reported bribes to politicians in 2008 (75% to Democrats, 25% to Republicans). In order of bulging pockets, the following politicians collected the most boodle from Goldman Sachs over the past 20 years: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Jim Himes, Chris Dodd, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Arlen Specter, Rahm Emanuel, John Sununu, Jack Reed, Michael Skelly, Max Baucus, tom Harkin - the list goes on and on and on and on.
See http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000085 for the details.

In return for the $6 Million, the politicians have so far paid back $13 Billion of your tax dollars to Goldman Sachs. That's a one year return of over 200,000 percent.

That's real "investment banking." Somali pirates don't get returns like that and their main expenses are for used rubber boats and boiled peanuts to feed their crews of cutthroats.

George Soros gave about $3.5 million to politicians in 2008; and Soros is probably even smarter than the Goldman Sachs partners if you judge based on his success at making billions by manipulating currencies over the years. Figure that Soros has also made at least a 200,000 percent return on his "investment" and you can assume that he's in his money bin rolling around in something like $10 Billion of your tax dollars.
see http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/George_Soros.php

Talk about pirates! Shiver me timbers!

Referring to pirates, President Jefferson (or somebody) famously said, "Millions for defense, not one red cent for tribute."

Presidents Bush and Obama and their handmaidens Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Rahm Emanuel, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner apparently believe in the motto, "Billions for contributors, a few red cents for the rest."

All in all, we're complacently overlooking the largest theft in the history of the world, the very Godfather of all thefts; while President Obama is keeping the media and us dazzled with his fancy footwork as he walks his new pooch and his smooth mouthwork as he proclaims how much he cares about the poor chumps who are going to get some crumbs from his programs.

A Treasury Secretary with his briefcase can steal a whole lot more than 10,000 men with guns. It's been written that 'every man defines the extent of his own greed." True enough, since Tim Geithner took the time and effort to cheat on a paltry 30 Grand or so in taxes while he was being groomed to steal tens of billions in the smoothest heist since that clever dude cheated his brother Ishmael out of his birthright for a bowl of porridge.

Incidently, please don't read this as a partisan attack on the Democrats. When politicians steal on this scale they make sure everybody dips their beak so they can be sure nobody important enough to get attention will squeal. Just to prove this really is a bipartisan post, here's then Senator Obama yucking it up at a roast held in 2005 for Rahm Emanuel. You will notice that there are no suitcases of small bills visible in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHX-g1FtaMs&feature=related

The AIG bonus hullabaloo may be a smoke screen

Everybody from President Obama down to pond scum like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd is yelling and screaming about $165 million in bonuses that AIG paid to employees who had contracts guaranteeing them those bonuses.

All this outrage is itself a hypocritical outrage because the stimulus bill that President Obama rushed to sign and that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd rushed through congress contains specific language that seems almost designed to guarantee those bonuses.

But I think this is all a sideshow and perhaps even a consciously designed smoke screen to hide the real thievery. The really interesting question is why everybody is so excited about $165 Million when AIG has already taken in $173 Billion of our money and has been rapidly paying out that money to a whole host of institutions all over the world with barely any transparency.

Here are the key question about this matter that we need an answer to before those tens of billions disappear and are no longer possible to recover.

Who is AIG paying those tens of billions out to? When did those recipients buy the the AIG mortgage derivative guarantees that AIG is paying off on with our money?

I think I saw the other day, for instance, that Goldman Sachs is a big recent recipient of money from AIG and that Goldman Sachs executives helped to design the TARP plan. Did Goldman Sachs buy those derivatives before or after it's executives "helped" Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke to design the TARP program?

I'd be willing to bet that there are smart folks out there who bought up AIG insurance guarantees at fire sale prices way below face value because they knew that they could get a little help from their friends in putting the government on the hook to pay off those guarantees at face value.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123743055512280701.html

Update: This guy makes a start at answering the question: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12679 I've quoted him below.

During his testimony this week, Fed Chairman Bernanke felt compelled to say, and I quote:
"AIG exploited a huge gap in the regulatory system; there was no oversight of the financial products division. This was a hedge fund basically that was attached to a large and stable insurance company, made huge numbers of irresponsible bets, took huge losses" One knows the folks at Goldman are no fools. Were they going to put good money down for CDS that their counterparty (AIG) might not be able to honor because it made no reserve provisions? Or was the temptation of another big pay day just too tempting not to risk Other People's Money to play the game?
To date we have poured $160 billion into AIG -- this while others see the value of their homes cut in half, the better part of their 401(k)s wiped out, their government services significantly reduced, and other lending institutions diligently try to work out past due credits, taking significant mark-downs and extending due dates to keep industries and corporations alive.
This, as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are being covered 100 cents on the dollar on their speculative positions of intrinsically flawed CDS derivatives on which they gorged themselves to the bursting point. It is past time that a distinction be made between that part of AIG's business that was a "large and stable insurance company," and that part that was a "hedge fund," or better put, a casino. So the big question becomes, why should AIG's CDS be paid down 100 cents on the dollar when the rest of the country is taking at or near 50% haircut on the value of its assets?

This would be funny if Barney weren't still giving more billions of our money to AIG

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/29717507#29717507

Here's a proposal. How about Barney Frank going back to Massachussetts? His claims that he bears no responsibility for the situation is beyond preposterous. He's the Chairman of the House Banking Committee and his party controls Congress.

Why are Barney Frank and Timothy Geithner and Chris Dodd and President Obama giving more billions to AIG if it's conduct continues to be "outrageous"?

I wonder how big a kickback Barney and Tim and Chris and Barry get out of the billions of our money they give to AIG.

And here's some breaking news. At least we're getting some bang for our buck in the form of good relations and a better image for things American around the world. Germans find President Obama to be so "finger lickin' good"that a company there has started a new product as "a homage to the American lifestyle and the new US president." See the link below.

I checked but could find no data on whether sales of arbuse are up in Germany. Hey, don't go thinking I'm constructing a subtle message here! I'm only reporting on the bare facts, which is the least I can do lest Attorney General Holder should deride me as cowardly.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,612684,00.html

Incidently, the sun's still very quiet, which may or may not be good for German arbuse farmers.

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWRmNmQ3YWQwYWYwZWYwOTJiZWMwYjE3ZjBmZmYzOTk=

Insurance company management is all about controlling risk

It's not often that I find something I totally disagree with on National Review's blog The Corner, but today I came across something incredible.

In a comment about the AIG bailout, Mark Hemingway wrote in part:

". . . AIG underwrites a massive amount of credit default swaps — which are very similar to insurance contracts for debt instruments. While I wouldn't say AIG couldn't have done anything to avoid their predicament, in some important respects, AIG's financial burdens were not created through their own mismanagement so much as being left holding the bag on these contracts after the failings of its customers. . ."

My comment on this is that AIG is an Insurance Company. The core business of an Insurance Company is to insure risks. The essential core of insuring risks is to avoid taking on so much of any one kind of risk as to put at risk the company's ability to survive the failure of any one type of risk. Insurance companies justify their existence and make their profits precisely by being responsible for "holding the bag" when the risks they insure go bad. AIG's management thus failed in not exercising the prudence which is the most essential characteristic of an insurance company. If that isn't mismanagement, I don't know what is.

Note that Mr. Hemingways comment above was made within a longer post about the wisdom of the government bailout of AIG and of statements by Joe Biden and Sarah Palin on that bailout. As it happens I don't know enough about the details of how AIG's failure might have affected other imprudent and mismanaged companies, so I can't comment on the wisdom or otherwise of his entire post beyond saying that his argument seems reasonable to me. You can read his entire post for yourself at:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWU3ZDk1Y2U0NjU0YTBlMTcxZTliMjcxNDI1YTYwMmE=