Posted on 11/25/2008 10:25:47 AM PST by vietvet67
For several days there was a fierce national debate over whether American car companies in Detroit deserved $25 billion of taxpayer money and whether American jobs should be saved. The automakers and a union representative were ridiculed, didn’t get the money, and were told to come up with a “plan” to save the companies. After backing the $700-billion Wall Street bailout, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News said Detroit didn’t deserve any federal money because the car companies had been mismanaged. This was a point made by many in the media.
But Citigroup got $20 billion over the weekend from the Treasury Department without any national debate or discussion at all. The Federal Reserve simply issued a press release on Sunday afternoon announcing that the taxpayers were on the hook not only for the $20 billion but $306 billion in loans to the company. That’s on top of a previous $25 billion invested in the company by the Treasury Department.
It will be interesting to see if O’Reilly and other commentators, having excoriated the American automakers, will take issue with the Citigroup bailout, which was subjected to no public debate and no congressional hearings.
Auto company executives may have flown to Washington, D.C. on private jets, as O’Reilly and others noted, but Saudi Arabian prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has a major stake in Citigroup and also invests in the Fox News parent company, News Corporation, reportedly lives in a $100-million 317-room Riyadh palace. A nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, Alwaleed has been called the “Warren Buffet of the Gulf” and runs the Kingdom Holding Company.
Is this somebody who should be bailed out by American taxpayers?
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
It will be interesting to see if O’Reilly and other commentators, having excoriated the American automakers, will take issue with the Citigroup bailout, which was subjected to no public debate and no congressional hearings.
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Whatever happened to “government oversight” and “checks and balances”...??
Whatever happened to borders and spheres of influence?
one disappeared and the other went global.
The Republicans and Democrats in Washington are more beholden to rich Arabs and the Chinese than they are to the American Taxpayer.
Frankly, they’re all traitors.
The debt holders of the USA have decided what our government should and shouldn’t disclose. Unfortunately, those debt holders are the Middle East, China and Russia which see an opportunity to further there agendas while we pay for it in the process. This is a demonstration to the history books about the mistake of putting Equality first over Liberty. The real question is how long will it take for the American people to wake up through pain to reclaim the nation?
You beat me to the punchline.
If I had my way, and justice was served, I would be using the heads of various Saudi princes as footstools, a different one for every day of the year.
Instead, my governement enriches them further with my tax dollars. Unbelievable.
“Is this somebody who should be bailed out by American taxpayers?”
Yes. If you want to continue the Bush tax “cut” fantasy. Even the small countries bought our toxic paper—the president of Colombia—
“The whole world has financed the United States, and I believe that they have a reciprocal debt with the planet,”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26962762/
When you read “credit card debt” or “student loan debt” being “invigorated” think again—these loans, not only mortgages, have been “securitized” in the last decade, bundled into derivative instruments, and sold, especially overseas. Paulson was big on pushing the derivatives to the Chinese while at Goldman Sachs.
The derivatives are being “bailed out,” that is, due to foreign pressure. It’s pretty clear that’s happening if one reads through the news media’s misunderstandings and gullible repetition of cover stories and now Obama worship.
Why? Because the foreigners are also financing Bush’s tax “cuts” by buying treasuries. Then there is “deregulation” of Wall Street counterfeiters. Then there was the Fannie people going around the world saying their paper hand “implied” backing of the US Govt, which now Bush administration concedes to be true-now.
“Whatever happened to borders and spheres of influence?”
A bunch of Wall Street hucksters created securitized instruments and sold them overseas. Reportedly 20% of Russian reserves are in American MBS.
A bunch of Washington hucksters sold tax “cuts” without spending cuts and created vast fiscal deficits.
The foreigners not only buy our derivatives (mortgages, car loans, student loans), they buy the treasuries that finance the tax cuts (really expensive tax deferments)
The foreigners told Bush, bailout out our derivatives or we will stop financing your deficits.
Bush the Plutocrat hopped to it. He will get hefty overseas speaking fees soon.
Bonus points—Paulson himself was one of the pushers of the toxic American paper.
The Goldman Sachs counterparty risk to Citigroup (via off-balance sheet credit derivatives) is huge. Paulsen has always acted in the best interests of Goldman Sachs...even saving his do-nothing buddy at Citi, Robert Rubin.
Tax receipts as a percentage of GDP has been around 19.5% since WW II regardles of any raising or lowering of marginal rates.
The foreigners told Bush, bailout out our derivatives or we will stop financing your deficits.
Certainly that would be a problem.
Yeah, where are the heros that made this mess? Oh Wait, still running things? wow.
and that ‘toxic’ American paper.. no kidding ,, trillions and trillions of the stuff... a global economy killer or what.
Talk about a Global bail-out... on our ol’ Rockefeller dime.
I think Clinton, Jorge and the Obamanation are up to their necks in personal debt to the religious NAZIs who run the Saudi Oil Well Sheikdom.
At this point, I think foreign AND domestic policy are being controlled by a bunch of superrich religious lunatics from the center of the Arabian desert.
Saudis and Bush, Bush’s watch, his Bailout to his buddies.
Inshallah.
Still there! During the bailout frenzy, the government wrote a giant check, which the taxpayer will have to come up with the balance.
Putting the head of Goldman Sachs in charge of the whole thing without accountabilty? Well, clearly that was an oversight...
>>clearly that was an oversight...
Not really. That was the point. Who better to bail out the boys than their playmate and a BIG player in the types of transactions that led directly to this cosmic boondoggle and the never ending welfare for the bankers.
Generate a crisis, scare the proles, offer a solution, help your friends.
Slightly Hegelian, but essentially accurate.
Thank You, George Bush.
Putting the head of Goldman Sachs in charge of the whole thing without accountabilty? Well, clearly that was an oversight...
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Yeah — that kind of an oversight. What is going to be interesting is what CONDITIONS are going to be put on Obama’s bailout/stimulus “package”???? Most likely, my opinion anyway, is that he will tie a big part of his liberal agenda, as conditions on the spending of stimulus dollars.....(e.g you cannot buy just any car, it must be a hybrid) and other crap like that.....
Just think about all the nations who never paid their war debt to the US after both WWI and WWII. Why can't we do the same?
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