It is important we know just how bad things really are, it’s the only way to start to fix it..

Oops, sorry..
Hi Ian :)

*raising hand* I bet the money went to those in the Bush Regime who want a nice retirement fund upon leaving!

Thanks Ian

Digg please. Two trillion, maybe we won’t really miss it?

This is an abominable reality of Bushian politics.
I cannot wait for the 20th.

ABCNews is reporting that Obama intervened last week with Harry Reid to keep Lieberman in the Democratic Caucus and for bygones to be bygones. I am not sure I believe this but it would be an early and incredibly stupid political move if true.

RGJoe is the walking, talking, breathing definition of the old phrase “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Nicely done.

This whole “this information is too scary for citizens to know” schtick is so Bush regime.

Bernanke: “Can’t talk – national security, doncha know.”

“Oh – and ‘Executive Privilege” too – almost forgot that one. And *I* even used to be an executive too. So there.”

“By the way – we need some more money.”

OT, but
Executive Privilege THIS, Suckahs!
Fire up the back-up tapes, boyz
judge says that just because it’ll be ”difficult” don’t mean you don’t have to hand over your !@#$! emails!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..use_e_mail

That’s the URL. Linky button no worky right now.

FunnyD

OT – Wolfie asks about the dangers of Obama rushing in and doing too much, too soon.

Panel responds with a unanimous “are you out of your fucking mind, man?”

Wolfie skulks away muttering about the irony of “this most liberal Senator” benefiting from Bushy policy of Executive Power.

Panel shut off before they could run off camera to find heavy objects to throw at Wolfie.

They promised transparency and endless reports and notifications and we are seeing the exact opposite. If we can’t trust them on this (and we can’t), then we can’t trust them on anything.

As Ian points out, this half-assed, throw money to our cronies approach does nothing to address the fundamental issues of this crisis. We need help for homeowners to help a major segment of our population and shore up housing prices. We need to nationalize banks, force them to disclose their toxic assets and swaps exposure, and force them too to re-start normal lending. We need to nullify naked swaps, settle equity backed ones for pennies on the dollar, and put clear and strict limits on derivatives in general. And we need re-regulation of the financial industry. Each of these steps locks into the others. See how it differs from the opaque, we don’t want to know, and even more importantly we don’t want the public to know approach of Paulson and his henchmen?

If I were a Republican or a right of center Democrat.. I would take that two trillion, keep us at war(s), beat back the labor movement and deny all people single payer health care for at least the next 25 to 50 years.. and buy up more water rights.

See how it differs from the opaque, we don’t want to know, and even more importantly we don’t want the public to know approach of Paulson and his henchmen?

yes. under your scenario the losses would tend to accrue to those who’d made the worst bets. under the P&B approach the rubes get stuck with the bill they can’t see until it’s all over and it’s time to pay up.

I have no doubt that this will turn out to be a huge scandal.

Um, Bernanke has a fixed term. He can’t be summarily fired when a new President takes over. Same with Mueller at the FBI. The idea was to keep politics out of those positions.

If I were a Republican or a right of center Democrat.. I would take that two trillion, keep us at war(s), beat back the labor movement and deny all people single payer health care for at least the next 25 to 50 years.. and buy up more water rights.

That’s very depressing. And likely true.

Oh, oops. Missed the last paragraph, sorry.

And keep us at war.

don’t know if I really believe this but I sure don’t write it off as baloney

RAND Corp lobbies for new war to save US economy

* Report cites China, Russia and Japan as possible targets of war with foreign power

LAHORE: Reports coming from top Chinese news outlets suggest the RAND Corporation recently presented a shocking proposal to the Pentagon in which it lobbied for a war to be started with a ‘major foreign power’ in an attempt to stimulate US economy and prevent a recession, according to a report posted on the Pakistan Daily news agency website.

According to the report, French news sources uncovered the proposal, in which RAND suggested that the $700 billion earmarked to bail out Wall Street and failing banks “instead be used to finance a new war which would in turn re-invigorate the flagging stock markets”.

The report noted the RAND Corporation as being a “powerful organisation with ties to the US military-industrial complex”.

more

Heh. Just switched to Lou Dobbs, who I almost never watch. He’s on the story right now.

Asking him to step down would probably work.

How long are they going to be spending our money with no information? As one says, I was born at night, but not last night. How gullible do they think we are? Sounds like the original proposal for NO oversight; they got it.

Good for Bloomberg News.

Creating war against another major power: and people wonder if there really is such a thing as evil.

No one could’ve predicted the leech of the heavies.

They can impeach Bernake, or charge him with crimimal malfeasance!

And Barney can kiss my big left bun! ( for thinking that way).

From the Bloomberg article:

“I talk to Geithner and he was pretty sure that they’re OK,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “If the risk is that the Fed takes a little bit of a haircut, well that’s regrettable.” Such losses would be acceptable, he said, if the program helps revive the economy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..=worldwide

Geithner is head of the Fed in New York, a Summers protege, and possible candidate for Secretary of the Treasury.

skipping over the immense evil in such a proposal, it might be worth taking a look at this recent tomgram from mike davis.

Is War the Answer?

The third problem with the New Deal analogy is perhaps the most important. Military Keynesianism is no longer an available deus ex machina. Let me explain.

In 1933, when FDR was inaugurated, the United States was in full retreat from foreign entanglements, and there was little controversy about bringing a few hundred Marines home from the occupations of Haiti and Nicaragua. It took two years of world war, the defeat of France, and the near collapse of England to finally win a majority in Congress for rearmament, but when war production finally started up in late 1940 it became a huge engine for the reemployment of the American work force, the real cure for the depressed job markets of the 1930s. Subsequently, American world power and full employment would align in a way that won the loyalty of several generations of working-class voters.

Today, of course, the situation is radically different. A bigger Pentagon budget no longer creates hundreds of thousands of stable factory jobs, since significant parts of its weapons production is now actually outsourced, and the ideological link between high-wage employment and intervention — good jobs and Old Glory on a foreign shore — while hardly extinct is structurally weaker than at any time since the early 1940s. Even in the new military (largely a hereditary caste of poor whites, blacks, and Latinos) demoralization is reaching the stage of active discontent and opening up new spaces for alternative ideas.

Although both candidates have endorsed programs, including expansion of Army and Marine combat strength, missile defense (aka “Star Wars”), and an intensified war in Afghanistan, that will enlarge the military-industrial complex, none of this will replenish the supply of decent jobs nor prime a broken national pump. However, in the midst of a deep slump, what a huge military budget can do is obliterate the modest but essential reforms that make up Obama’s plans for healthcare, alternative energy, and education.

In other words, Rooseveltian guns and butter have become a contradiction in terms, which means that the Obama campaign is engineering a catastrophic collision between its national security priorities and its domestic policy goals.

I don’t think it’s true … HoJo’s Neocon trolls also said as much about Clinton; a claim that has been denied by a Clinton spokesperson …

Hi Jackie

Barney Frank, embarrassing himself yet again, claims the Fed should keep its clap shut because if people know how bad it is, well, there might be a run. I think Barney’s missing the point, as long as people don’t know how bad it is, they won’t trust anyone who might be borrowing large amounts of money from the Fed with crap collateral, because they don’t know how bad it is and they suspect it’s really really really bad. As in 10 cents on the dollar bad.

WTF’s up with Barney Frank? C’mon, Barney, get with the program. It’s Republicans who want to keep everything secret and behind closed doors. Secrecy is OK when you have the public trust, but when you don’t (viz: Preznit Bush), the public doesn’t trust what you’re doing, and has no confidence that you’re doing the right thing.

If Geithner is sure they’re “OK,” let some sunlight in. The public will be encouraged, and public trust will support you.

Bob in HI

If Obama asks him to leave, he’ll leave. The idea that politics is out of those positions is laughable, Bernanke has been a complete Republican hack, despite how villagers are pretending he isn’t. More to the point, he’s an incompetent hack. The US really can’t afford to pay another few trillion dollars for Bernanke to test out his theories about how to create Great Depressions.

Bernanke has a fixed term.

Does that mean when he is found guilty of criminal conspiracy, he still keeps his job? When he and Paulson are found guilty they need to go to prison. But not the nice white collar prison, they need to be with the real criminals.

These two thugs are America’s greatest thieves.
But, Barney Frank seems to be an active co-conspirator with them.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

“The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,” said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. “In a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.”

Federal Reserve spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment on the loans or the Bloomberg lawsuit. Treasury spokeswoman Michele Davis didn’t respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment…

Before Sept. 14, the Fed accepted mostly top-rated government and asset-backed securities as collateral. After that date, the central bank widened standards to accept other kinds of securities, some with lower ratings.

The Liberty University grads in the InJustice Department are also part of this caper. To you Bible Thumpers, $2 Trillion is $2000 billion dollars, $2,000,000,000,000

It’s Republicans who want to keep everything secret and behind closed doors.

exactly. the dems of the 110th congress never pulled any of that shit. /s

Job creation would be best in the following areas?

renewable energy

health care

infrastructure

education

I agree. The focus has been on Paulson and Treasury for their inside deals worth hundreds of billions while all the while Bernanke has been slinging around multiple programs that run into the trillions, and with no Congressional oversight or consent needed.

Excellent analysis. We can’t recover thru war as we did in the late 1930’s. We simply do not have the manufacturing base thanks to the free traders. We don’t have the resources either. Bush though he was handed the deed to America when he became president. He has sold all our resources.

Even the Pebble Mine in Alaska is going on the block to international consortiums, Canada has been granted sweetheart deals for mining the rest of our gold. The list goes on and on.

Once we do start trying to recover, the amount of America that is still America will be shockingly little. We may never know the full extent of the American sell-off but that it even includes our banks and homes should point out how much we’ve lost under these traitors, whose mantra, I believe has always been “nothing for America”.We’re in third world country status now thanks to Bernanke and Bush’s parting gifts to their friends, which probably included some loose change for themselves.

Renegade=Barack
Renaissance=Michelle
Capri=Jill

Secret Service names…missed Joe Biden.

U.C.A.. United Chumps of America. In a real democracy where the government was affraid of the people rather than the people affraid of the government Bernanke and his fat cat friends would be running down the street in terror. Will Obama let bygones be bygones in the spirit of bipartanship?

i don’t know but i like them all.

Bernanke is said to be looking for them under desks behind chairs and between seat cushions, as I write.

Of course, if President Obama doesn’t pay for his own toothpaste or underwear, the right wingers are gonna be pissed. Yep, it’s okay to steal TRILLIONS if you’re a republican, but not paying for toothpaste is TREASON!

[Not having read many of the comments above, so if I repeat, I apologize…]
I think there’s two huge problems you can identify from your post, Ian. First, is the transparancy issue, scary enough given that these white-collars have been strip-mining middle class taxpayers for years. Second problem–and I’ll bet few high information readers notice it–is that only a small percentage of the public is aware of this 2 Trillion in loans. Most people think that a 700 Billion dollar bailout was approved. But the Bush Administration, pirates all, has decreed that they do NOT need congressional approval (or oversight) to dole out this cash.

Words fail.

Cherchez les neiges d’antan

That Fed $2 trillion has gone to the same place as the Iraq $10 billion. We could be poetic about it, and say that all that money has gone to join the snows of yesteryear, that it now resides with the intoxicating odor of last year’s roses, and that it’s all piled up now in neat rows right next to the smiles of Helen of Troy, and of Cunegonde, and of the winsome Rosalinda. Or we could cut the crap and just say that the bastards stole the money.

There’s a new Depression building. Unemployment is heading north, and Americans have quit spending money on their own private wants and needs. Which mode of viewing the news about the theft of $2 trillion in taxpayer money do you think the voters will adopt, the poetic version, or the version that ends with heads on pikes?

Who do people like Bernanke imagine that they are? You could embezzle a few million and just end up going to jail. But $2 trillion? That’s not money — that’s the wrath of God. You steal that and you either end up with a public building named after you, or you go to whatever substitute for the guillotine (the guillotine itself is too French) we’ll be setting up on the Mall within a month. We would really have to be flush for it to go the public building route, and maybe things have been so flush for so long for rich people in this country, that someone like Bernanke really can’t visualize what is actually going to happen to him now that the hayride is over.

God help us all.

“As for Bernanke, this is yet another reason why Bernanke, a central banker so incompetent he lost complete control of LIBOR”

I don’t see how the Federal Reserve Chairman is supposed to “control” LIBOR. It doesn’t seem that he can directly since it is the London Interbank Offering Rate and is based on a daily market average of interbank lending in London. I know that the Fed can directly control the Discount rate and maintaining an appropriate spread between the Discount rate and LIBOR is often important.

I think the large spread as of late is the Fed’s attempt to inject liquidity back into a frozen credit market and I don’t think the Fed was willing to watch American banks and businesses burn for the sake of maintaining some textbook spread. Anyone have any thoughts on that?