Robert Scheer: Our Loss is BlackRock's Gain:

"How much do you know about the BlackRock hedge fund?

Better bone up fast, now that the folks at BlackRock are calling the shots in the government's trillion-dollar bailout program. As both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, BlackRock execs are now directing key elements of the government program at a time when they stand to reap great profits from the fallout of a problem they helped create.

The unregulated hedge fund calls the shots in the government's trillion-dollar bailout program--snapping up bad loans some of its execs originally marketed.

The United States picked BlackRock to manage the assets once controlled by AIG and Bear Stearns and to analyze the assets of Freddie Mac and Morgan Stanley. And as if that were not enough on its plate, the Treasury Department has just selected BlackRock to be one of the few firms trusted with using US taxpayer dollars to buy toxic assets from the banks and then resell them in a process tha presents enormous conflicts of interest with other BlackRock operations.....


Confused? You're supposed to be. That's the point of a successful hedge fund, a totally unregulated activity in which very rich people pool their money in order to more effectively rip off the rest of us. And BlackRock is at the top of that game, managing $1.3 trillion in assets. But in this round the stakes are far higher because BlackRock, which did a great deal to cause the economic meltdown, has now been put in charge of the government recovery effort. "

snip


<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090601/scheer?rel=hp_picks>

:kick:

The more I read, the more I think this economic devastation was planned from the beginning.