Banks to Taxpayers: Get Over It

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/111517/banks-to-taxpayers-get-over-it?mod=bb-budgeting&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

And this was all because Lehman's collapsed.
Well that's not believable any more is it? Did you see that Bernie Sanders is asking the FED for a little more information? Like how much John Paulson and his rich millionaire friends borrowed? How all the other corporations like Toyota and Honda got a place in line was totally beyond me.
It seems like everybody had a piece of the FED's party pie except the average taxpayer. All "WE" got out of the deal was the bill for the cleanup afterwards, and now they want "us" to get over it, like the AIDS that they've all been affected with has miraculously just disappeared.
So if it's disappeared why is the FED still having to dole out the medicine in pill form, rather than the shot, to keep the symptoms at bay?
Yes the life support goes on and except now as an added slap in the face,
"We" are just expected to forget the fact that they are criminals, and to just continue to support them in the life they've become accustom to without question.
The big question that comes to my mind is, bonuses?
You've gotta be kidding me.
Someone needs their ass cut for allowing that. There is no evidence period that any of them should have even entertained the idea, let alone received one.


The phrase "zombie" banks comes to mind when the numbers are laid bare: Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS - News) borrowed $61 billion in one overnight loan. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS - News) hit up the Fed 81 times for a combined $600 billion. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C - News) and Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC - News) borrowed a combined $2.6 trillion under the Fed's primary dealer facility.

Even J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM - News) used the central bank's term auction facility seven times.

Oh, and the banks' way of saying thanks for all of this: Get over it.

$1.9 trillion for Morgan Stanley

Most banking institutions aren't only downplaying the drastic measures they took to keep the doors open day to day by suggesting it's all ancient history. They're arguing that what happened then has no bearing on what's happening now.

In other words, just because they were hiding their wounds then, doesn't mean they're hiding anything now.

Fed to Release Details on Lending Programs Wednesday.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/11/30/fed-to-release-details-on-lending-programs-wednesday/

I can see now, it's going to be one of those kinds of days.
Couple this information with the fact that 2 million people are now rolling off unemployment extension and we're gonna have one pissed off nation that's for sure.

On a personal note:
This year alot of little kids are not going to have a Christmas.
Give yourself the gift of "Joy" by making sure they do.
This time, don't just think about it
Do it!


The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected Wednesday to release data on financial institutions and foreign central banks to which it made more than $2 trillion in emergency loans during the financial crisis, according to a U.S. senator who has long been pushing the Fed to be more transparent in its actions.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I., Vt.) plans to hold a conference call with the media Wednesday afternoon to discuss the data

The Disease That Is America

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=171582


PT Barnum once said there was a sucker born every minute. That was a long time ago, and it would seem that the suckers, having no one else left to procreate with except themselves, have now left the nation utterly incapable of realising the depths of the rational thought process.
Karl proves this point perfectly, or rather I should say the comments on Karl's blog have.
Not one comment stated, what should have been the obvious, that Palin, as well as the rest of the Tea Party, have left out of their political platforms.
The over taking of "OUR" Nation and the enslavement of "OUR" people through the economic art of embezzlement, by the actions of Ben Bernanke for the further empowerment of the Federal Reserve, or by Timothy Geithner's misuse of the United States Treasury for furthering the agendas of his honorary governorship of the IMF.
All the tits and ass in the world will not be distraction enough for what Ben and Timmy have done and are now currently continuing to do, through the process of QE2, for the total debasement, of any type of buying power for the dollar.
Starvation can be a real eye opener, but by then it will be to late to do anything about it.
America you must ban together and take back your nation now, or there is NO FUTURE for you or your children, other than that of Zimbabwe, where a loaf of bread, if you can afford it, cost 10 thousand dollars.


My my my, what lovely sheep you are.

Last night I posted a commentary that Sarah Palin will be delivering today.

She, like all modern politicians, reads from a teleprompter. Wow. I'm impressed. For the record, in all of my public-speaking engagements, I've never used one. Even when it was offered. I don't believe in them.

20, 30, 40 or more years ago, there wasn't one. I will sometimes bring a set of cue cards with me to the podium, and others have historically done that as well. In my view, if you can't orate from your mind, you can't orate. Anyone can stuff a suit or a blouse - witness the bubbleheads on TV every day.

Are you selling your words? Or are you selling your **** - or penis?

(Get over it folks - sex sells and always has. When was the last time you saw an ugly TV news anchor?)

Nonetheless, I want to focus this commentary on the responses to that Ticker.

They're not only sad, they're a reflection of us. Some short excerpts:

How Hank Paulson's inaction helped Goldman Sachs

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/10/101753/inaction-by-treasurys-paulson.html#storylink=omni_popular

Remember Hank Paulson and all those little special favors he did for his old friends?
Did he reign in their recklessness.....NO
Did Congress .............NO
Congress just ended up giving the banks more money because Hank Paulson threatened them with martial law.
Now why would he think martial law? Because if the truth came out about mortgage-gate, people would have sought out the highest form of retribution against the banking industry.


Henry Paulson has received widespread acclaim for his bare-knuckled decision-making as the treasury secretary at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, but former federal regulators say he missed multiple chances to contain the disaster.

Among the prime beneficiaries of Paulson's inaction in 2006 and 2007 was Goldman Sachs, the investment banking behemoth he ran before he was named to former President George W. Bush's Cabinet.

Paulson's failure to take steps to curb risky mortgage lending also enabled top executives of other Wall Street firms to continue cashing big bonus checks, while less privileged Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings in the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been widely praised for engineering the Wall Street bailouts



Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/10/101753/inaction-by-treasurys-paulson.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz123tlz75k

Bono Partner McKillen's Suit May Hold Key for Anglo Irish Loans

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-04/bono-partner-mckillen-s-lawsuit-may-hold-key-to-14-billion-in-u-s-loans.html

Oh wow, this is what they want to fleece the people or Ireland for.
More crap real estate, the real kicker is that it's all in the US.
Not 1 dime of that 69 billion that they are asking the Irish people to fork over is in anyway going to help them at all.
It's time for a real world change people by and for the common man.
Because the elite don't know what the hell their doing, but then again maybe they do, Lining their own pockets while billing it to the people.


When Dublin property investor Patrick McKillen bought a 21-story Boston office tower for $170 million in 2006, his lender, Anglo Irish Bank Corp., helped find an anchor tenant: itself.

Now McKillen, Anglo Irish and its U.S. headquarters at 265 Franklin St. are entangled in a lawsuit that may determine how the bank, seized by the Irish government last year, handles more than $14 billion of debt backed by U.S. property. The bank’s loans are tied to buildings including a Rodeo Drive shopping mall in Beverly Hills, California, and the century-old Apthorp apartment building on New York’s Upper West Side.

“Anglo Irish ramped up its U.S. lending and has a book of loans that would be very appealing to real estate opportunity funds,” said Ben Thypin, an analyst at Real Capital Analytics Inc. in New York. “Big real estate players have tried to pursue purchasing Anglo’s assets but have been tripped up by uncertainty around who is actually in control: the bank or NAMA.”

McKillen’s suit against Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency -- itself a tenant of his in Dublin -- adds to the financial chaos surrounding the bailout of the nation’s banks. The government said last week that it will take control of Allied Irish Banks Plc, the second-biggest lender, and inject extra cash into Anglo Irish, pushing the cost of the rescue to as much as 50 billion euros ($69 billion). A hearing on whether the case may proceed is set for

The Irish aren't smiling as the eye their corrupt elite

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/02/irish-eye-their-corrupt-elite

Ireland seems to have the same problem that America has, the corporate elite are catered to at the expense of her taxpayers, who are just supposed to keep coughing up cash with no explanation as to where it's going at all.
For some reason the financial elite seem to think because they are the "advisers" of the President, they know what's best to run the country.
And what's best is always in "Their" favor at the expense of "our" ass.
This is a "world wide" phenomena that has turned into a way of global governance.
How does funding a no branch bank help the Irish taxpayer? And why should they be expected to do it at all? Their not even privy as to why it needs to be done, let alone what the damned bank is for.


Many thanks for calling it like it is in your editorial (1 October) on the Irish economic collapse. The Irish government has got it wrong again, but the clue to why is not in the "dozy government" line. It is hidden in your quote that "the elite directing the Irish economy is more tightly closed than an oyster shell". Ireland operates like a one-party state and the government is just the political wing of that elite comprising developers, bankers and newspaper owners, with a whole network of vested interests descending into almost every corner of the Irish state and economic life.

Of the €50bn of taxpayers money now committed to bail out the disastrous gamblers of the Irish banking system, nearly four-fifths of that sum is going into one bank, Anglo Irish. This bank has no high-street branches and so no claim to be part of the essential infrastructure of the country. And it is a bank which economic advisers have consistently told the government not to include in the blanket bank guarantee, because the scale and rottenness of its debt will surely bring the whole house of cards down.

So why is the government so interested in this bank? There is absolutely no transparency. No minutes of key meetings, or of the workings of the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which is managing bank debts for the government, have seen the light of day. In fact it is in the Nama legislation that its workings can't be disclosed and that staff who speak about their work will be subject to criminal proceedings. Neither will key ministers answer questions about any personal investments in this bank. Could it be that the majority of investors in Anglo Irish are the same elite who also control the government? Cock-up or conspiracy?

The Financial Con Of The Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/financial-con-decade-explained-so-simply-even-congressman-will-get-it

It's time to flood Congress with this explanation on how we know we were conned.
America said NO to the bailout
And then we were sold out by
Con-gress

Sometimes, when chasing the bouncing ball of fraud and corruption on a daily basis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the millions of trees (all of which have a 150% LTV fourth-lien on them, underwritten by Goldman Sachs, which is short the shrubbery tranche). Luckily, Charles Hugh Smith, of oftwominds.com has taken the time to put it all into such simple and compelling terms, even corrupt North Carolina congressmen will not have the chance to plead stupidity after reading this.

Of course, to those familiar with the work of Austrian economists, none of this will come as a surprise.

1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating umlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.

2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.

3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.

4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.

5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).

6. When the longside bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.

7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.

8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.

9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.

10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.

11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending.

12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.

Charles' conclusion does not need further commentary as it is absolutely spot on:

Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.

AIG, autos offset Treasury bank bailout profits

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60A4XU20100111

OK I understand the hit from AIG and the auto makers, but the 27 billion on the home affordable modification program has me stumped. We all know that very few home loans were ever actually modifidied, so it couldn't possibly from that, unless we were paying people to do actually nothing, so the only other thing that it could possibly pertain to is the $8000.00 tax credit for first time buyers.


- U.S. taxpayer profits from bank bailout investments are being offset by estimated losses from American International Group and automakers and mortgage payment cuts for struggling homeowners, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Monday.

The Treasury estimated net losses on its $700 billion bailout program at $68.5 billion for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009.

The December report for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, showed that the fiscal 2009 net loss included estimated losses of $30.4 billion for AIG and $30.4 billion for automakers, with $27.1 billion in losses from the Home Affordable Modification Program.

34 banks don't pay their quarterly TARP dividends

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2009-10-07-banks-tarp-dividends_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip


The U.S. taxpayers' investments in smaller banks are increasingly at risk.
In a sign that more banks are under great pressure from the recession, 34 financial institutions did not pay their quarterly dividends in August to the Treasury on funds obtained under the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). The number almost doubled from 19 in May when payments were last made, and also raised questions about Treasury's judgment in approving these banks as "healthy," a necessary step for them to get TARP funding.

"The banks are not paying their dividends because they are worried about preserving capital," says Eric Fitzwater, associate director of research at SNL Financial.

The Treasury Department says it cannot force an institution to pay dividends

Treasury has given $365 billion to 700 institutions from TARP. AIG, to which the government has pledged $180 billion, has accumulated $1.6 billion in unpaid dividends. And CIT, which received $2.3 billion from TARP, said in a regulatory filing that it is restructuring its debt and seeking approval from bondholders for a pre-packaged bankruptcy. If that happened, it would wipe out the entire government investment.

How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...802955_pf.html


the world's largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government's key rescue programs for banks.

At the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial giants getting help from the government.

The company did not initially qualify for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.

As a result, GE has joined major banks collectively saving billions of dollars by raising money for their operations at lower interest rates. Public records show that GE Capital, the company's massive financing arm, has issued nearly a quarter of the $340 billion in debt backed by the program, which is known as the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, or TLGP. The government's actions have been "powerful and helpful" to the company, GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt acknowledged in December.

GE's finance arm is not classified as a bank. Rather, it worked its way into the rescue program by owning two relatively small Utah banking institutions, illustrating how the loopholes in the U.S. regulatory system are manifest in the government's historic intervention in the financial crisis.

The Obama administration now wants to close such loopholes as it works to overhaul the financial system. The plan would reaffirm and strengthen the wall between banking and commerce, forcing companies like GE to essentially choose one or the other.

"We'd like to regulate companies according to what they do, rather than what they call themselves or how they charter themselves," said Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman.

GE's ability to live in the best of both worlds -- capitalizing on the federal safety net while avoiding more rigorous regulation -- existed well before last year's crisis, because of its unusual corporate structure.

Banking companies are regulated by the Federal Reserve and not allowed to engage in commerce, but federal law has allowed a small number of commercial companies to engage in banking under the lighter hand of the Office of Thrift Supervision. GE falls in the latter group because of its ownership of a Utah savings and loan.

Unlike other major lenders participating