WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?

and that’s with about a 1.6 to 1.0 pound-to-dollar conversion rate, right?

sSee… they have $900MM to lend! to other banks no less.

How much of this attitude is due to 8 years of Bush and Cheney, and how much is due to 20 years of Bush I-Clinton-Bush II?

And by the way, George Orwell was pretty much right on with his “1984,” in too many ways.

Bob in HI

Bend over America,here it comes!!!

Oh yeah, forgot to convert, changed the title.

If this is actually true, this needs to be on a banner headline on the paper. This is completely outrageous and this bailout a complete and total fraud and Paulson needs to be in court under oath do some splainin… and he can be followed by Barney Frank, Dodd and Schumer and the other peanut gallery miscreants.

this is about as depraved as you can get

this might be the powder keg that gets us to reverse any understanding that corporations are people

that is one of the most important things we can accomplish

Man, I want to see the republicans try to defend this kind of depravity

Thanks Ian.

digg

several firms have defended these bonuses as being necessary ,to reward managers and make sure they don’t jump ship!!!

unfrigginbelieveable!!!

Not to split hairs but the 14 billion includes salaries and bonuses. Not that it detracts from the fact that ANY bonuses are an obscenity.

Ian, it’s worse than this.

The original piece is at www.dailymail.co.uk, and the figures are quoted in pounds sterling.

When converted to dollars, they’re proposing to loot 11.3 billion from a bailout of 9.87 billion.

That photo always makes me crave a pork-chop. MM-MMM!

there had *better* be a lame-duck session after November 4.

With incontrovertible evidence that the bill that was passed is fucked up and ridiculously easily out-flanked, how can they *not* come back in and fix it?

hey, they took this lemon for a test drive - and - surprise, it turns out to be a lemon.

Ian, this is something FDL pulled back in April 2006.

Rubber Stamp Republican Congress Stamps in Action

I hope you, Jane, and the wider FDL community can think of something similar around some iteration of your slogan,

“personal responsibility is for the little people.”

from naomi klein: The Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth

…every day it becomes clearer that the bail-out was sold to the public on false pretences. Clearly, it was never really about getting loans flowing. It was always about doing what it is doing: turning the state into a giant insurance agency for Wall Street, a safety net for the people who need it least, subsidised by the people who will most need state protections in the economic storms ahead.

This duplicity is a political opportunity. Whoever wins on November 4 will have enormous moral authority. It should be used to call for a freeze on the dispersal of bail-out funds, not after the inauguration but right away. All deals should be renegotiated, this time with the public getting the guarantees.

didn’t see much reporting on this (shocking, i know) but the UN had meetings this past week on the global financial crisis - which was led by stiglitz. from the UN press release:

The United States Government and the Bretton Woods institutions had failed to adequately address the international financial crisis, and the United Nations must intervene as the one institution that was inclusive and had political legitimacy, Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, said today during an interactive panel discussion on the global financial crisis.

Mr. Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate and Professor at Columbia University, said that, while the crisis bore a “Made in the United States” label, it was in fact worldwide and required a global response that must be consistent with justice and social solidarity for all countries, reflect an understanding of the necessary balance between Government and markets, and respect the principles of democratic due process, including full transparency.

we can also watch the webcast here.

FWIW, cutting salaries and bonuses is one of the first remedies that struggling firms take. The bigger the pay package, the more room there is to cut.

Per Ian, “the crisis” was for the little people.

s

Save the County Clubs!

/s

thers upstairs

What! The “Bailout” is just a vehicle for further enriching the criminal classes by looting the Treasury?

I’m shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED. Who could possibly have forseen this?

We can’t stop paying taxes, but we can stop working. How about a nation wide strike, all except emergency services. That will get congress’ attention. Organize it through the internet.

Isn’t Paulson originally employed with Goldman Sachs? All he is doing
is paying off all the dudes to keep them….I think we should all be
mailing emails to Barney Frank as he has said that he will go after them
hammer and tong!! Where is the oversight?? Barney better get on the ball
and quickly…..or does the congress have to be in session in order to
complete the oversight?? Hope they don’t wait til January as the treasury
will be reading empty by then…. I read in the Boston Glove this morning
an article about Barney Frank threatening to cut off the bailout before it
is all gone. They can do it!

Send those emails…..Barney is up for re-election on Tuesday!!

Maureen

Sounds like a job for “The Spocko Squad” (A Quinn Martin Production)

An elite team of accountants, tax attorneys, private investigators, bounty hunters, laid off pissed off servants of the rich and of course bloggers.

We travel the global to expose and recover ill gotten gains, the misuse of the tax payer dollars and bring law breakers to justice.

In Color!

Tonight’s Episode:

Sachs of Gold

Starring
Lt. Dan Spocko
Sgt. Trademark Dave

Guesting starring Ian Welsh and “The Professor”

You do remember that certain members of Congress were threatened with Martial Law if this money was not made available, right?

SOP - business as usual.

When the management team took US Airways into BK, they broke labor and vendor contracts, stiffing employees and folks who delivered fuel, airplanes,etc. (not to mention the stockholders got bupkis).

These same jokers argued before the BK judge (Republican, natch) to not only uphold their employment contracts (including bonuses, although how one deserves a bonus for bankrupting a company remains unanswered), but paying “retention bonuses” (why one would wish to retain folks who bankrupted a company remains unanswered as well.

Of course, the judge ruled for them.

Who are the real parasites in our economy?

We could flood Congress with 8X10 glossies of Ian’s hawg! That pic is worth about 9.8 billion words!
Only way it could be better would be with Paulson’s face photoshopped onto it.

Thanks, Ian.

Um, I say that we should keep half the money and investigate the crap out of these bozos.

from naomi klein: The Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth

…every day it becomes clearer that the bail-out was sold to the public on false pretences. Clearly, it was never really about getting loans flowing.

Well yes, you’re right. It wasn’t to make credit flow. It was to buy up toxic assets. Somehow somebody changed it and for reasons which seemed sound. I suspect somebody lied (imagine that) to Paulson & Congress to get the change and now we have little credit flow and many toxic mortgages.

Apparently some people like the situation as it is and are diverting the bailout monies to avoid the needed change.

Somehow there are secure people who don’t mind the idea of the economy collapsing and people losing their jobs, homes and businesses. It’s practically treasonous.

Now if if they had used the money to lend, that would’ve been alright. If if they hadn’t insisted on still giving bonuses we might have trusted more. And, if they hadn’t decided to use the money to buy good assets from weak firms we might have believed it wasn’t all part of a plan to bilk the American tax payer.

What I’m wondering now is whether they will ever be required to pay it back as the plan suggests they will. Just how much do we have to give before we pass over the tipping point and find it more worthwhile to throw the bums in jail even if the economy is erased?

Please do a diary on this. Thanks for a terrific post.

So the Wall Streeters gamble big and place big bets on what clearly were risk and unsupported investment model overloaded “investment products” over a period of several years. By LasVegas standards Wall Street went with very bad impulsive/compulsive conduct and behavior. The Ponzi stackers won out over the prudence takers over and over and over.

Just before an WH election concludes this steaming pile of excessive risk denial,risk burial and risk exposure gets tossed into late election WashingtonDC circus ring.

WashingtonDC puts on a big morality play and claims there is no way out but to shovel one trillion $$ plus(for starters only-more to come) of American taxpayer backed up largess over to Wall Street,Big American Banks and what appears to be a growing line of American Corporatists seeking handouts as well.

Of course this first installment of fascist corporatism somehow comes with diluted or nonexistent rules,loopholed safeguards or with less oversight than most American local,city or county governments expend on road/bridge building and upkeep,school building projects or new court house/jail projects. A typical road/bridge project,school building or county courthouse or jail project getting more review and line item consideration than this trillion dollar plus appears to have received.

To now learn that the culprits who created this debacle will still get pay outs,bonus awards and lucrative contractual compensations as if they are not guilty of basic LasVegas gambling transgressions fully revealing just how rotted WashingtonDC is as run by an enforced “two party” system and the money politics it feeds on.

Has anyone been indicted,arrested/perp walked since this Wall Street/American Banking “meltdown” first came to light?

One person? Five people? Ten people? Anyone?

Considering that Americans are being told everyday how evil “socialism” is and how Universal HealthCare for all Americans is simply “too hard to do and too costly” or how we need to work harder and longer before we can ever retire why is Wall Street/Big American Money Business getting this very custom version of corporatist socialism?

The corrupted nature of it is numbing.

Ultimately leads to conclusion that WashingtonDC and Wall Street deserve to be sacked and shown no quarter or mercy.

None whatsoever.

Hi Ian,
With the scouring clean of the US Treasury, there are few accumulations of wealth left to plunder in the world that are not highly guarded - other than the wealth of the top 5%. By the time this systemic collapse is over, those accumulations will be gone as well, it is the nature of systemic collapse. One would think there is enough intelligence there to cop on to the danger they are in before it is too late; however that is doubtful given the nature of highly vested interests.
Only a complete systemic collapse will unseat those accumulations from exercising their power, maybe a good thing given the history. If so, it will behoove having in place an alternative economic model and the ability to communicate that model widely with public understanding, an improbable task given the state of education of the public.

Ask yourself this: How aware were you two years ago that the housing bubble was sliding down the slippery slope?

How aware were you in April of 2006 when the Fed stopped publishing the M3? That was a Clue, at least it was for me.

Other than Ian, and a few contrarians like myself, no one was interested then. Now, everyone has an oar in the water. Maybe paying some attention to the economy was just as important as the never-ending story of the primary season. Eh?