Tag: Alan Greenspan

The Maestro on LIBOR

I understand that nothing can shock your inured souls, for I too am made dust by self-pulverization at the brazenness of the lies, the vacuum of accountability, and public indifference…

…but allow me, for the fourteen-millionth time, to insist that, “Nobody could have predicted” financial parasitism:

“Through all of my experience, what I never contemplated was that there were bankers who would purposely misrepresent facts to banking authorities,” Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, said in a phone interview. “You were honor-bound to report accurately, and it never entered my mind that, aside from a fringe element, it would be otherwise. I was wrong.”

Apex parasites cheat.  Who knew?  Certainly not the Supreme Parasite, whose poor psycho’s [conscience?] requires immediate defibrillation.  Maybe a stun gun would do the trick.

However habituated I seem to be to their chronic lies, murder, and thievery, occasionally they throw me a medicine ball that hits my solar plexus just so, and I’m crumpled and breathless at the most ordinary thing.

Of all people!  Dishonest bankers?  Father!  Take my soul to heaven, now!

Media and the Message. CNN; Retain Bush Tax Cuts

 

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria says the easiest way to cut the deficit is to let the Bush tax cuts expire.

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

The day was Sunday, August 1, 2010.  Former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan appeared on Meet the Press.  When asked to discuss the Congressional debate on tax cuts, the man known to move markets, a person who leans to the “Right,” offered a decisive decree.  In direct disagreement with Republican officials and the profitable corporations that fund countless political campaigns, Mister Greenspan declared, “Look, I’m very much in favor of tax cuts,  but not with borrowed money.  And the problem that we’ve gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day, that proves disastrous.  And my view is I don’t think we can play subtle policy here on it.”  

This statement was as a slap in the face to corporations, or more correctly to the tycoons who head these firms.  Multi-millionaire media moguls might understand this best.  These television and radio Executives experience firsthand that influence over an industry can translate into influence over an outcome.  Cable News Network Chief Officers are among those who actively make use of this truth.  Tax cuts expired?  “Never;” say network Administrators and the newscasters such as Allan Chernoff, who do their bidding.

If you haven’t seen this? See it

If you haven’t yet seen Frontline’s documentary about Brooksley Born, the woman who warned about the dangers of the Derivatives markets during the Clinton Administration, and the resulting financial disasters that ensued from deliberately choosing to ignore her, you simply must see it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…

Frontline is one of the few true journalistic documentary shows remaining in this country.  And in this case they do their usual superlative job in presenting the story of what happened when Wall Street took over Washington, and when an idiot named Alan Greenspan channeled tricked everybody into thinking he was a genius.  

And yes, Virginia, it was Clinton’s fault.  It happened on Clinton’s watch, when Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan convinced everyone that NO REGULATION of the markets, of Wall Street, was a good idea.

Can you believe that?   Alan Greenspan actually came out and said that even going after blatant fraud on Wall Street was a bad idea, a mistake even, because “the markets would take care of it themselves”.   He gave fraudsters a GREEN LIGHT.  

This is like saying we shouldn’t fight gangs of street thugs because it will sort itself out.  Police?  Just stay home.  Rapists and murderers and thieves will somehow just take care of themselves and will magically eradicate themselves.

Indeed this was a classic example of Magical Thinking.

And Magical Thinkers ran this country’s economy, and almost destroyed it completely.  

And what is worse, is that the policies that led to this are still in place.  Nothing has changed, and I mean nothing.

And some of the people who LED this disaster are now back in power, with the Obama administration.  Larry Summers, for one, who was “the enforcer” for these fools, the tough guy who would really play hardball with people (and how that must have made his balls swell with manly pride when he would do that) is now Obama’s chief economic adviser!

This is just insulting as hell.

This is like putting Charles Manson in charge of security for the Oscars.

Obama is an idiot to have these guys anywhere near his big-ass ears.  These people should be too ashamed of themselves to ever step foot in Washington ever again, but here they are, in control.

What is astounding about this documentary is that what this woman warned about, regarding the derivatives market, happened.  

No, not in 2008.  It happened in 1998.  

In 1998, exactly as she predicted, a major, enormous hedge fund went under and almost took the economy of the United States down with it.   And what was the result?   Nothing.   Greenspan and the other fools managed to convince Congress that NOTHING was the thing to do, that NOTHING was the plan, that NOTHING could be done.   “I can’t conceive of any way we could regulate this!” was his refrain.   He didn’t want to.   He had a childlike fascination with Ayn Rand and thought that there simply should be no regulations of any kind, that government should have absolutely no ability or power to TOUCH industry, or banking.  And here we had a guy with this kind of MAGICAL THINKING in charge of the Federal Reserve!  For years.  And touted as a genius.  

It blows the mind.

And keep in mind this happened on a Democrat’s watch.  Bill Clinton, the best Republican President ever, as I’ve always said.  Indeed he was.

So what happened in 1998 happened ten years later, AGAIN, almost to the date.  Only this time it was a mega-meltdown, the mother of all meltdowns, and once again EXACTLY what this woman warned against.   This woman whose job as a regulator was destroyed by an Act of Congress, a woman who was deliberately neutered by these fools who didn’t even know what a derivative WAS.   And this time it nearly did take the economy of the world down with it and still very well might.  

And what do we have now?  This slimy old piece of dung FOOL, Alan Greenspan, saying “gosh, I guess I was wrong all my life”.    And his buddies Larry Summers and his mop-topped protoge Timmy Geithner back in the White House.

Obama, you’re an idiot.   Larry Summers, you should resign in shame at once.   Congress, you should figure out a way to impeach Geithner and get rid of him.  They all gotta go.  If they don’t clean house, this is all going to happen AGAIN.   And that’s not me saying that, that’s Brooksley Born saying that, and she’s saying that now, that if this isn’t dealt with, and it is STILL not being dealt with, that this will happen again.  And again.  And again.  Until we learn and finally get it right.

We have learned, and we are deliberately not getting it right?  Why?  Because Wall Street makes money off of it.  Yes, the banks.  And they will be bailed out, and they will have their billion dollar bonuses, and this country will see what is in effect NATIONALIZED GAMBLING taken hold, by the ultra-rich, in a game that they can never lose.

In fact, just today, it has come out that Geithner’s idea to “fix” things, this little fuck actually has the gall to come out and propose that the Big Banks have an unlimited line of credit from the Executive Branch of the country, that they should be able to do whatever the FUCK they want and be PERMANENTLY BAILED OUT.   With no limits as to the dollar amount behind the bailouts.  

What the FUCK is this shit?   This is throwing good money after bad taken to a literally insane level.  Here, check this shit you, you simply won’t believe it:


In my opinion, Geithner’s proposal is “TARP on steroids.” Section 1204 of the proposal [the proposal being the “Resolution Authority for Large, Interconnected Financial Companies Act of 2009”] allows the executive branch to use taxpayer money to make loans to, or invest in, the largest financial institutions to avoid a systemic risk to the economy.

Geithner’s proposal reminds me of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion Wall Street bailout adopted last year, but the TARP was limited to two years, and to a maximum of $700 billion. Section 1204 is unlimited in dollar amount and is a permanent grant of power to the executive branch. TARP contained some limits on executive compensation and an array of special oversight authorities. Section 1204 contains absolutely no limits on executive compensation and no special oversight.

When I asked Geithner whether he would accept a $1 trillion limit on the new bailout authority (if the executive branch wanted to spend more, it would have to come back to Congress), he rejected a $1 trillion limit, insisting that the executive branch be able to respond without coming back to Congress.

That’s Geithner’s idea of how to “fix” corruption on Wall Street — KEEP GIVING THE CROOKS MONEY.

Why the FUCK does this guy have a job again?  Why the FUCK isn’t he fired?   How DARE he propose something like this?

This documentary should be required viewing by everyone in this country.

And after watching it you will never want to see Larry Summer’s ugly face ever again.  But you will, because he’s Obama’s “guy”.  

With Dems like these, who needs Republicans?  

They’re all crooked.  Time to throw them all out.  All of them.   Every last one.

It’s just so appalling.  

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…

FRONTLINE Presents: The Warning (on the economic meltdown)

FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES THE ROOTS OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

FRONTLINE Presents

The Warning

Tuesday, October 20, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

In the devastating aftermath of the economic meltdown, FRONTLINE sifts through the ashes for clues about why it happened and examines critical moments when it might have gone much differently.

In The Warning, airing Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank) unearths the hidden history of the nation’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…

New Rule: Only 1 Clusterf#$k per idiot. Re: Greenspan

     It seems that Mr. Greenspan has reared his head again to give us more of his unsound economic advice. You’d think one ginormous worldwide financial disaster would be enough for this guy, but Alan Greespan, like an animal trainer after a wild mauling, insists on trying to help even after the white tiger has clawed your face off.

    So I am going to take a page out of Bill Maher’s book and put down a New Rule.

    There will only be 1 Clusterfuck alloted per idiot expert from now on. After that, should you attempt to give us more advice, we get to move you into a box underneath the Queensboro Bridge, and then launch that box into deep space.

    Take the New York Times for instance. Now that we might go to war with a country with four letters in it’s name that starts with I they have “advice” to give us. Good thing for me, between the New York Times’s advice on I country wars and Greenspans expertise, I can wipe my ass with the place I live now.

    America, land of the Double Whopper with WTF sauce. Pass the scotch.

    More ranting below the fold

Elizabeth Warren: Lobbying on behalf of the American People

We have been told that Wall Street Investment firms are “Too big to Fail” — But that does NOT Mean they are “Too Big for Accountability”!

The Question boils down to,

Who Does the Congress Represent anyways

The American People, or the Global Bankers (and their Lobbyists) ?

And Will the People bother to care about Wall Street Regulation this time around?

Since I’m assuming we will, here’s some essential background on the Wall Street Meltdown mess:

Credit Default Swap (CDS)

What Does Credit Default Swap (CDS) Mean?

A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.

http://www.investopedia.com/te…

CDS’s are an easy way to transfer Credit Risk — Check!

Alan Greenspan’s ‘shocked disbelief’ today in Congress

In the big U.S. newspapers this afternoon are reports of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s appearance before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today.

The Washington Post reports Greenspan described the financial crisis a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” and the Los Angeles Times adds Greenspan warns unemployment will rise.

“This crisis … has turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined … Given the financial damage to date, I cannot see how we can avoid a significant rise in layoffs and unemployment.”

According to The New York Times, Greenspan said he “made a mistake” in believing free markets could regulate themselves without government oversight.

On a similar note, the LA Times adds Greenspan “admitted that the crisis showed flaws in his strong free-market ideology”, but I don’t interpret him saying that at all.  

Alan Greenspan – Legacy of Mr. Bubbles

Peter Goodman of The New York Times examined the role of Alan Greenspan in the financial collapse in The Reckoning: Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy.

The article has been sitting open in my web browser now for almost two weeks wondering when I was going to write about it. Since I’ve not see this article covered, I want to make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed. Unfortunately, I do not find Greenspan very inspiring, so the best I can do at this time is a Lazy Quote Diary™. It begins with a quote from Greenspan.

“Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.” – Alan Greenspan in 2004

Bear Stearns and the N-Word: Nationalization

Today, the United States will do something which it hasn’t done since the New Deal: it will nationalize a corporation.  Bear Stearns is the new Tennessee Electric Power Company.

After a weekend of intense negotiations, the Federal Reserve approved a $30 billion credit line to help JPMorgan Chase acquire Bear Stearns, one of the biggest firms on Wall Street, which had been teetering near collapse because of its deepening losses in the mortgage market.

In a highly unusual maneuver, Fed officials said they would secure the loan by effectively taking over the huge Bear Stearns portfolio and exercising control over all major decisions in order to minimize the central bank’s own risk.

President George Bush is responding to the disasters of one of Wall Street’s most reckless firms by echoing the actions which he has so passionately criticized in Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez.  When the high-stakes financial gamblers of derivatives trading are exposed, the true face of Bush Republicanism has been revealed: they are nothing less than communists.

Mission Accomplished – The Door to Iraq’s Oil Will Soon Be Open

George W. Bush, his neo-con backers, his supporters in Congress, from both sides of the isle, the establishment media, the MIC and on Wall Street have accomplished their mission in Iraq. If there was ever any doubt about what that mission was then perhaps this article from Asia Times will make it clear. The article is rather long  and so I’ll try to provide some of the highlights here. The blockquotes are from that article.

And, as former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan wrote in his memoir – The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”

It appears that John McCain might well get his wish – 100 years of US occupation of Iraq.

Iraqi Oil Minister Shahristani is described in this article as being “not too religious, not too political, not too secular and not too pro-American. He is a Shiite who was imprisoned by Saddam Husein and held in solitary confinement by Saddam Hussein for 10 years. He is now the Oil Minister of Iraq.

Shahristani finds himself in an enviable position as a creator of wealth for the Western world. He holds the key to the door that opens out to the magical world of Iraqi oil.

Sunday Night Theme Songs

In which some of the week’s top stories are given theme songs.

Democrats are impressed with General Petraeus’s shiny medals, before he proceeds, as expected, to catapult the propaganda about the war.

Washington Post:

Even Democrats who despise the war policy were deferential in the face of the general’s even-keeled demeanor and his shiny silver stars, four to a shoulder. “He’s one of the best,” said Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, who ran proceedings in the ornate hearing room and ordered a succession of protesters ejected when they shouted their anger at the war.

Bush speaks to the nation, to catapult the propaganda about the war.

(Bubbles) Greenspan: “Oops”

Greenspan alert on US house prices

US house prices are likely to fall significantly from their present levels, Alan Greenspan has told the Financial Times, admitting that there was a bubble in the US housing market.

Now he tells us! Now that, after encouraging the bubble, blowing it out of proportion, and claiming that it was not possible to tell if there was a bubble, said bubble is blowing in our faces as many observers have predicted for a number of years now, he claims that it was obvious all along.

What a lying piece of shit.

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