An article from AlterNet explains how America has been punk’d on the fraudulent bailout by our federal government. Claims about a credit crisis used by Congress to justify giving a blank check to Wall Street are demonstrably false — as they have been all along — and this country has been subject to a smorgasbord of financial fraud that has never been seen before courtesy of political corruption and greed.
As noted by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, the financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation’s income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich, despite the fact that at this point it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it while having a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.
An article from The New York Times details how salaries of financial CEO’s were merely play money — a pittance compared to bonuses. In the New York area especially, nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Earnings have gone down and in some cases been reversed, but not the bonuses.
An article from Reuters notes that the credit crunch is not nearly as severe as the U.S. authorities appear to believe and that it’s startling that many of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s remarks about the bailout are not supported or are flatly contradicted by the data provided by the very organizations they lead.
Senate Republicans Trying To Dissolve Unions
Foreign nonunion auto companies located in ths South are reportedly enlisting the help of GOP Senators from states in the south to break the United Auto Workers (UAW) Union because they have a plan to reduce wages and benefits at their factories in the United States and they can’t implement the plan without destroying the UAW.
The UAW already made some concessions. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Bob Corker ( R-TN) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-AK) are Senate Republicans who torpedoed the automotive bailout bill — after it was passed by the House of Representatives — when they tried to force the UAW to take more reductions in wages and benefits as one of the conditions for supporting the bailout. Closing GM and Chrysler would put an estimated 3 million more people out of work on top of the more than 2 million who have already lost their jobs.
For a $17 billion loan, these Senators wanted wages ‘restructured.’ The $700 billion bailout for the financial sector didn’t require any wages being ‘restructured’ and there is still little if any oversight. The hypocrisy and double standards are staggering. According to the New York state comptroller, employee compensation accounted for more than 60% of 2007 revenues for the seven largest financial firms in New York.
President Bush Authorized Automotive Industry Loans
One Condition of the automotive industry ‘loan’ authorized without Congressional consent by President Bush reportedly dictates that American corporations pay their employees significantly less than the employees of foreign owned manufacturers and/or that American corporations pick the pockets of their senior retirees. Congress continues lying about automotive wages, saying that American auto workers are paid $73 an hour. They’re not.
Republicans have had nothing but contempt for working Americans and the ‘Middle class’ for decades and don’t care how many citizens suffer from the economic crisis.
As noted by an OpEd in the New York Times, “For decades, Republicans have supported corporate efforts to earn profits without accountability to working Americans. Profits and bonuses rose before the decline, often by eliminating domestic production – and jobs – while switching operations overseas.
Yet when some of our biggest domestic employers need help – employers that actually produce something tangible, unlike Wall Street – Republicans choose to preach rather than do something constructive. Their actions betray American workers and sabotage an already fragile economy.”
Limbaugh Spreading More Lies
Rush Limbaugh was busy spreading his lies and propaganda — it truly is amazing that such a lying sack of doggie dung gets paid the millions of dollars he does for being part of Bush’s propaganda machine — trying to blame Democrats for the economic crisis. The desperation of Bush’s propaganda machine as they try to rewrite history is becoming more pathetic with each passing day.
An article from The New York Times explains how Bush and his economic team paired Bush’s belief that Americans do best when they own their own home and that markets do best when left alone. Bush pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities and his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards while ignoring warnings that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming.
Contrary to Limbaugh’s lies and delusions, the economic crisis took a lot longer than five months to create and in actuality, were fueled by Bush’s failed economic policies. This article from Think Progress has more explains how the “root cause of the financial mess is the hands-off approach towards mortgage and finance markets by the Bush administration and its lack of action when a disaster was imminent.”
Lack of Oversight and Accountability
The Associated Press reportedly contacted 21 banks that have received at least $1 billion in taxpayer money to see what they’re doing with it and not one of them responded. The nation’s largest banks will not say how they’re spending billions of dollars and there is no system in place for monitoring what banks are doing with all the billions doled out by the Treasury Department. Taxpayers have little to assess what has happened to the first $350 billion of their money — half the original $700 billion fraudulent ‘bailout’ — allocated to the Treasury by Congress.
As noted by AlterNet, the real crisis — the real world of jobs, wages, health care premiums and pensions — keeps getting ignored by Washington while checks with no strings attached continue being written to well-heeled campaign contributors on Wall Street under the guise of a lending crisis. Congress continues lying about not being able to do anything about it while forking over billions of taxpayer dollars to campaign contributors. Information on what can be done about it is available in the AlterNet article. So far the cost of the fraudulent bailout has hit $8.5 trillion, and there appears to be no end in sight.
It appears that Congress was well aware of the upcoming financial crisis back in March 2008 which is allegedly why they had a secret closed session. The financial fraud orchestrated by our Federal Government continues growing more blatantly obvious and could end up costing this country for generations to come. The only way to get justice is for the people to demand it.
Note to Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the trolls trying to justify the rampant damage inflicted on America and the rest of the world by Bush and his cronies: attempts to rewrite history by the most crooked, never-elected presidential administration will fail, especially since there are so many people who are bound and determined to make sure the truth is known and that the criminals are held accountable.
Share This
Back to Bill’s Blog | Bill’s Links and More