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The whole "financial crisis" was just another giant scam.

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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 06:23 PM
Original message
The whole "financial crisis" was just another giant scam.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-regulators-civil-charges

Brutally, the banks knowingly gamed the system to grow their balance sheets ever faster and with even less capital underpinning them in the full knowledge that everything rested on the bogus claim that their lending was now much less risky. That was not all they were doing. As Michael Lewis describes in The Big Short, credit default swaps had been deliberately created as an asset class by the big investment banks to allow hedge funds to speculate against collateralised debt obligations. The banks were gaming the regulators and investors alike – and they knew full well what they were doing. Simon Johnson's 13 Bankers shows how the major American banks deployed vast political lobbying power and money to create the relaxed regulatory environment in which all this could take place. ...

Now it has all collapsed, to be bailed out by western taxpayers. The banks are resisting reform – and want to cling on to the business practices and business model that has so appallingly failed. It is obvious why: it makes them very rich. The politicians tread carefully, only proposing what the bankers say is congruent with their definition of what banking should be. Labour and Tories alike are united in opposing improved EU regulation of hedge funds, buying the propaganda those operations had nothing to do with the crisis. Perhaps Paulson's trades at Goldman, and the hedge funds' appetite for speculating in credit default swaps, may disabuse them.

It is time to reframe the question. Banks and financial institutions should do what economy and society want them to do – support enterprise, direct credit to where it is needed and be part of the system that generates investment and innovation. Andrew Haldane – and the governor of the Bank of England – are right. We need to break up our banks, limit their capacity to speculate and bring them back to earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNod06Tk3cY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7OEkhkKAUI

The whole "financial crisis" was nothing more than a reallocation of wealth from everyone else to those rich and "tied in" enough to invest in certain powerful hedge funds.

The whole bailout was about paying off the debts to these hedge funds.
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cutlassmama Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 06:26 PM
Response to Original message
1. It would appear so.
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FiveGoodMen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 06:29 PM
Response to Original message
2. That's what I've always thought.
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Oregone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 06:31 PM
Response to Original message
3. But, but, but...if we didn't do it we would have another 1929!!!!
Eh, I think I just recall seeing Dingel say that on Stewart this week.

Now everything is magically fixed. The toxic assets up and became pure and whole. Great Depression Redux averted.

:rofl:

I'm sorry. Nothing has fundamentally changed in regards to liquidity.

Either there was no catastrophe on the brink, or there still is one. But what we do know is that what got us here, to the point of the bailout, was the largest fraud perpetrated in the history of mankind.
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-21-10 02:07 AM
Response to Reply #3
13. Yes. This is so clear. Follow the money. Exactly whose pockets did the bailout money line?
Edited on Wed Apr-21-10 02:07 AM by mhatrw
And exactly why aren't the heads of these people on stakes?
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ShockediSay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 06:35 PM
Response to Original message
4. A scam? Tell that to those out of work w/out a home. No, they don't want big government
Edited on Tue Apr-20-10 06:46 PM by ShockediSay
They want big banks with the big money they pay their lobbyists/propagandists!

THOSE are the ones controlling so-called big government today.

PS: The first bi-partisan bill at regulation had a do-whatever-you-like
exception for payday lenders brought to you by their lobbyists, their donors,
and the Republican Senator receiving those moneys, I believe.

Big government isn't the problem, it's the big fat lobbies and their
filthy rich corporate clients who want their profits at the expense of
the majority of the American People.
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branders seine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 07:21 PM
Response to Original message
5. gee.
ya think?
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 07:23 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. Well, considering that some folks are unrecommending this thread,
there appears to be some disagreement on the obvious.
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branders seine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 08:33 PM
Response to Reply #6
10. kool aid is nasty stuff.
rots the brains right out of its addicts.
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Skittles Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 07:26 PM
Response to Original message
7. no shit
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anarch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 07:29 PM
Response to Original message
8. well, that being just an especially egregious example of what the whole system is about,
That's what our whole society is about: the reallocation of wealth from everyone else to the elite ruler class.
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bvar22 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 07:32 PM
Response to Original message
9. Idiots who are easily fooled?....
or willing co-conspirators?
I don't see a middle ground on this issue.

Hank Paulson & Friends

NOW we have Your Children’s Money too !!!
And there is not a fucking thing you can do about it!
Now THIS is “Bi-Partisanship” !
Better get used to it!!
Hahahahahahahahaha!
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dem mba Donating Member (732 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 10:50 PM
Response to Original message
11. yea those geniuses at Lehman and Bear Stearns really pulled one over on us
I don't think its quite that simple.
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-20-10 11:23 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. The geniuses were at the hedge funds who bet on the collapse even though
they knew neither the investment banking firms nor the firms insuring the investment banking firms had even 5% of the money due them if their bets paid off.

Whose money were they counting on getting paid if they won if not ours?
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dem mba Donating Member (732 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-21-10 09:41 AM
Response to Reply #12
16. one would think that
during a housing boom one would "hedge" by betting on the collapse. But alas, hedge funds don't really work like that.

Anyway, I think only a few hedge funds made out well during the crash (Paulson). The hedge fund industry as a whole was down about 20% in 2008. So those geniuses were few and far between and kept to themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/worldbusiness/10iht-hedge.1.17681138.html?_r=1
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-21-10 12:40 PM
Response to Reply #16
17. Who made billions betting on the housing crash?
Which hedge funds did the bailout pay off dollar for dollar instead of the cents on the dollar they would have gotten had gotten had Congress allowed all of these corrupt institutions to go bankrupt?

Follow the money and you will find the culprits.
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laughingliberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-21-10 02:33 AM
Response to Original message
14. K & R nt
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SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-21-10 05:02 AM
Response to Original message
15. It had to happen BEFORE all the boomers started cashing in their chips
and whaddayahknow, it did just that...:(
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