The Federal Reserve and Department of the Treasury financial institution bailouts are nothing more than a legalized Ponzi scheme, bailing out irresponsible behavior by the banks, and the cost to middle class Americans dwarfs our spending on entitlements, Medicare/Medicaid, defense and everything else. Unfortunately, most of the American public does not realize exactly what the banks are doing and getting away with.
Almost no one is talking about the most serious financial catastrophe taking place in the U.S. today. Instead everyone is focused on reigning in Congressional spending, particularly in areas like entitlements and Obamacare. But there is a part of government that flies under the radar, unaccountably increasing our debt to far more dangerous levels. It is considered the financial part of the Executive Branch, but there are very few checks and balances coming from the other two branches of government. It is the powerful Department of the Treasury and the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve. Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, and Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, are two of the individuals most responsible for this financial meltdown, although it began prior to their terms in office. The Fed and the Treasury are responsible for engineering financial institution bailouts that cost taxpayers $12.1 trillion through February 2009. This massively dwarfs the $3.83 trillion spent on Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, defense, and other government programs.
A few people are starting to speak up about this shadow budget. Former CEO and stock trader Karl Denninger is leading the expose. Glenn Beck and Elliot Spitzer are covering it on their talk shows. Rolling Stone Magazine featured astunning expose this month about two wives of Morgan Stanley executives who received $220 million in bailout funds. The new documentary "Inside Job" uncovers who was really responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown. Tea Party activist and social media guru Eric Odom wrote an article last week about it entitled "The Greatest Financial Theft in the History of Man."
Odom calls the bailouts a Ponzi scheme. The simple explanation of how they work is this: The big banks on Wall Street invest in risky ventures, like granting high-risk mortgages to people who really cannot afford them. When the investments inevitably fall through, leaving the banks on the brink of failing, the well-connected, powerful bank CEOs use their connections to the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury to get the government to bail them out.
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I have been complaining about BAILOUTS since the Airlines were BAILED OUT! Go to http://www.mackeyforpresident.com. I WILL stop the madness, simply because I am NOT a politician. I am a direct representative for the American citizen.
I’ve been saying this for years about the Wall Street Welfare system. You just can’t get Joe Six Pack to want to understand the problem. If someone could get a 15 second sound bite, like Carville’s famous “It’s the economy stupid” sound bite we might be able to stop this garbage. Conservatives just do not know how to fight the guerilla warfare method like the liberals do. Is there a conservative Carville out there?
While many conservatives huff and puff over welfare to Wall Street, they will almost invariably fail to do anything about it. It’s so much easier to reduce Grandma’s Medicare benefits than to take on multibillion dollar corporations. While they will deny it to the very heavens above, those conservatives, at the end of the day, are pro-business enough to let expressions of outrage be the limit of their action.
Gestell: You are absolutely correct that conservatives do huff and puff over corporate welfare. Please don’t get conservatives mixed up with rinos, there is a difference. It is hard to do anything about it with liberals in charge of one of the houses or if there are 40+ liberals in the senate. Playing the medicare card is a typical liberal talking point while being totally absent from the conversation with solutions to the problem. Please don’t tell me about raising taxes on the rich to cover their excess spending either, everyone with any understanding of economics knows that raising taxes does nothing more than reduce tax revenues.
If you want a real solution to the problem abolish the Fed. In the last three years the Fed has printed in excess of 12 trillion dollars, enough to have funded medicare, medicaid, social security, the defense department and other agencies. The big banks which I am sure you dislike should be allowed to fail like anyone else. All the Fed does is reward bad behavior and you and I end up paying for it.
Gestell, have you tried taking Grandma’s Medicare away, it isn’t so easy! The problem with bailouts and corporate welfare is the solution is a negative one which is unacceptable to politicians of any stripe. First, don’t bail them out, do nothing for the next financial crisis. Second, go on an aggressive deregulation campaign, free up restrictions on financial institutions to allow competition where only those who do the right thing are rewarded by the consumer. But doing nothing is so unpalatable to politicians that they would rather cause harm so they can go into the next election boasting how they stuck it to those evil corporations. What are doing now, congressional show trials, more intrusive regulations and bail outs are clearly not working; why should we double down on failure?