Bush, "Paulson & Perps" and Bailout Recipients All Scammed American Taxpayers
The Treasury, another politicized department run by Bushite loyalists, aided and abetted their Wall Street crony perpetrators and are now handing them hundreds of millions of dollars of no strings attached, no accountability required giveaways.
Big corporate financial institutions and the Treasury department inflicted this economic crisis on the American people and now they've defrauded the American taxpayers with this bailout.
As economist Dean Baker writes at Huffington Post: "For some reason most of the discussion in Washington and the media of the bank bailouts is overlooking their central feature: taxpayer dollars are being used to sustain the income of incredibly rich bankers. The public should be furious over this upward redistribution of income.
"The basic story here is very simple. If we got the government out and left things to the market, virtually the entire banking sector would be bankrupt. Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and almost all the other big banks, and thousands of smaller ones, would be out of business. (My bet is that even "healthy" banks like Wells Fargo would be in bankruptcy before too long. They hold plenty of bad debts, too.)
"The bank executives and shareholders took big risks that went bad. If they are rewarded with taxpayer handouts, then the message this sends to the financial sector is to keep taking irresponsible risks. The game becomes heads they win, tails we lose. If the bets pay off, then they are incredibly rich. When the bets go bad, the taxpayer gets the tab.
"The moral reason for not rewarding executives and shareholders is that these rewards require the taxation of middle income people, like truck drivers and nurses, to transfer money to some of the richest people in country.
And Jonathan Tasini at Working Life writes about the bailout scam perpetrated by the corrupt recipient banks and the equally corrupt Bush Treasury Department led by Hank Paulson and his former Wall Street crew.
"there was this to ponder:
Congress approved the $700 billion rescue plan with the idea that banks would help struggling borrowers and increase lending to stimulate the economy, and many lawmakers want to know how the first half of that money has been spent before approving the second half. But many banks that have received bailout money so far are reluctant to lend, worrying that if new loans go bad, they will be in worse shape if the economy deteriorates.
"And...
But a Congressional oversight panel reported on Jan. 9 that it found no evidence the bailout program had been used to prevent foreclosures, raising questions about whether the Treasury has complied with the law’s requirement that it develop a “plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners.”
"So, surprise, the banks--and their execs--are looking after their asses, not the people who the rescue plan was supposed to partially help (and, recall, I pointed out the deep flaws in the plans from the get-go)--the people who need credit and loans."
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