| Bush and his Republican handlers and cheerleaders in the media scared the living daylights out of us about mushroom clouds that would supposedly annihilate our very being when in reality there were never any WMDs in Iraq that posed an immediate and direct danger to us. Tom Ridge scared us about looming bio-terrorist attacks and told us to rush out to buy duct tape and drop cloths for our personal safety, as if such silliness could have actually saved anyone from a common cold much less a lethal poisoning. And don't forget the laughable color-coded alerts to warn us about impending terrorist attacks. It is interesting how the alerts would inevitably register in the bright orange, creeping toward the deep dark red category, just before an election or any political event.
Bush Co. has terrorized us yet again but this time it is with the threat of another Great Depression, like that of the 1930s. The collapse would be cataclysmic in magnitude with such severe global ramifications that much of the planet could be thrown into chaos. Our only salvation, according to Bush Co.'s Hank Paulson, is to throw the financial sector an enormous lifeline. Go ahead boys and girls, this is your chance to empty the national treasury!
Bernie Madoff et al. must have been licking their gluttonous chops when they heard the news. The fat cats have been using off shore accounts for years because of light regulation. But now there is a new twist, there is no regulation here at home in the U.S. of A. Check out the The New York Times for the gory details surrounding offshore accounts.
Excerpts:
Federal prosecutors are beginning to consider what role offshore fund operations may have played in the $50 billion Ponzi scheme that Mr. Madoff is accused of orchestrating.
Of particular interest is whether Mr. Madoff and some of his investors used funds based in offshore tax havens to evade American taxes, according to a person briefed on the investigation.
Also under scrutiny is whether certain charities invested with Mr. Madoff had improperly allowed their donors to shift money offshore, and whether foreign banks had withheld American taxes on Madoff accounts, as required by the Internal Revenue Service, according to this person, who was given anonymity because of the delicate nature of the investigation.
Charities?! Uh oh.
And then there is the former Enron of course.
Offshore entities played key roles at Bayou Management, a Connecticut hedge fund that collapsed in scandal in 2005, as well as at Enron, which used nearly 900 offshore entities, mostly in the Cayman Islands, to conceal bogus trades and accounting fraud.
When the CEOs of Big Three flew their private jets to Washington to beg for a bailout of their own they were rightfully grilled and berated by Congress for showing an appalling lack of understanding about the mess they had created. Somewhat subdued and humbled, these same CEOs drove hybrid cars to Washington for their second Congressional hearing.
The Big Three CEOs got their bail out bucks in the form of a loan but unlike the Wall St. fat cats, the Big Three were handed narrow guidelines and binding strings. Autoworkers themselves got a blistering throttling from W. as if they had collectively and willfully destroyed their companies. You see, Bush Co. and the southern wing of the Republican Party have a visceral aversion to unions, fair wages and benefits. For months the Republican economists, their apologists and water carriers in the corporate media railed against the automaker workers' make believe $70.00 per hour salaries.
I guess it never bothers the Bush Co. boys and girls that most CEO's earn 90% more than their workers, they are the recipients of W.'s biggest tax cuts and, to sweeten the pot, they can hide their money in offshore accounts and shareholders end up paying the taxes on their multi-million dollar bonuses. Anyone with a 401K plan, by the way, no matter how small, is a shareholder.
And we wonder why we are broke?
And, meanwhile, back at the ranches on Wall St. the fat cats are getting bonuses from our taxpayer money that will buy posh multi million dollar apartments.
Daily Kos diarist nyceve discovered that $1.6 Billion of the bailout money went to executives for things such as:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
bonuses, chauffeurs, health club benefits, financial planning
I wonder how many modest average foreclosed homes $1.6 billion could have saved? It is a curious thought.
Peter Kraus received a $25 million payout from Merrill Lynch for the 3 months he worked there. After he received his bonus, Kraus left the firm. Soon thereafter he paid $37 million for an apartment in the most expensive building in Manhattan, 720 Park Avenue.
From Nyceve's diary, an excerpt from the Wall St. Journal.
Merrill Lynch's Peter Kraus Collects $25 Million, Then Resigns
Now, former Goldmanite Peter Kraus is getting his $25 million bonus, according to people familiar with the situation, though he has been at Merrill only three months. Kraus left Merrill Friday, shortly after his rich exit package was triggered by the Merrill sale. In a year when some bankers are being paid with junk, Kraus's exit payment is a stunner that represents to about 0.1% of Bank of America's $25 billion capital injection from the U.S. government.
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/200...
Several months ago former Texas U.S. Senator and John McCain's economic adviser, Phil Gramm, berated the American people for being nation of whiners. The so-called recession was merely a figment of our imagination, he scolded. We were in the state of a mental repression, not an economic one. One might recall that Gramm's wife, Wendy, was a high roller at Enron and she bailed out before the company imploded.
Several months later, while Lehman Brothers self-destructed, John McCain assured the American people that the fundamentals of the economy were sound. I suppose in the Cindy McCain realm of wealth, this could be true.
And while Gramm excoriated us for whining Bernie Madoff continued to pay his investors with money that was not there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I am no economist or finance guru but one does not have to be to grasp the obvious. Bernie and Kenny Boys, and their entire ilk, are the end products of an unfettered, unregulated, anything goes and highly corrupted capitalistic system that is rotten and evil to its core. Any politician who supports this should be publicly throttled and then fired by we the people who have been egregiously and criminally robbed.
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