Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ...(where is Bob Rubin?)

Guardian ^ | 01/26/09

[TigerLikesRooster]

Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ...

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[Pearls Before Swine]

Where is Barney Frank? And some of the cast of clowns and Fannie and Freddie, like Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick?

[SlowBoat407]

Musn’t forget Barack Obama, who, under the auspices of ACORN, got the ball rolling with forcing banks to lend to people who didn’t qualify.

[rellimpank]

—bflr—

[kittymyrib]

Interesting and thorough article of how we got into this mess.
Everyone should forward it to Bob Herbert at the NYT who fulminates in the rag today that it was all the Republicans fault for cutting taxes. Incredibly stupid man.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

LOL! Under comments one poster said:

“Minor players every one of them. The only real baddy is Milton Friedman.”

Ya gotta love the “euro weenies”!

[Perdogg]

I remember when I graduated from undergrad business school in 1988 I wrote James D Wolferson for a job. He said I wasn’t experienced enough. And to think it’s the Ivy league MBAs who have effed up the world.

[xcamel]

Duplicate Thread Tax

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2172038/posts

[Neoliberalnot]

Barney Fag and Chris Dodd at the heart of the mess and yet still walking free. These two should share a cell together for the next 50 years. Remember the old media screeching about Enron, an insignificant loss of a few million compared to the trillions foisted on our children and grandchildren to pay for the corruption of our sniveling liberal politicians.

[Missouri gal]

What a hack article. They have no blame for Barack Obama, ACORN, Barney Frank, David Axelrod and other key players on Obama’s team, but they rank President Bush high on the list of villains and completely ignore his many efforts to stop it. Jeez, fellas, it's ok to let go of your Bush Derangement Syndrome, now.

[fnord]

Pathetic list. They list Soros almost heroically as one who “saw it coming” and warned the world, lol.

Soros spent about one billion to buy the Dem party, control key Congressional committees which caused and exacerbated the bubble, and timed the burst for maximum electoral impact, thus buying him a toady in the Oval Office.

For that $1B Soros gained about $5B in profit, and he still owns the Dems and Obama. Pretty sweet deal.

Yeah, he saw it coming, because it was HIS plan.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Dittoes... Mega-Dittoes!

[IrishBrigade]

...let’s not forget HGTV...that piece of dung network regularly shows young couples buying a first home, becoming distraught because the kitchen counters aren’t granite and the f-—ing master bath and bedroom aren’t big enough...I get incensed when the wife eagerly fips this show on, and I have to listen to men who are so cowed by their mates as to worry about the ‘flow’ and ‘warmth’ of the rooms...whatever happended to the basic three bedroom house with one and a half baths and a one car garage for a starter home???

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

And half of those couples buying homes are gay guys! HGTV is such a “mo” network!

[Wally_Kalbacken]

"Hank" Greenberg, AIG insurance group

Now aged 83, Hank - AKA Maurice - was the boss of AIG. He built the business into the world's biggest insurer. AIG had a vast business in credit default swaps and therefore a huge exposure to a residential mortgage crisis. When AIG's own credit-rating was cut, it faced a liquidity crisis and needed an $85bn (£47bn then) bail out from the US government to avoid collapse and avert the crisis its collapse would have caused. It later needed many more billions from the US treasury and the Fed, but that did not stop senior AIG executives taking themselves off for a few lavish trips, including a $444,000 golf and spa retreat in California and an $86,000 hunting expedition to England. "Have you heard of anything more outrageous?" said Elijah Cummings, a Democratic congressman from Maryland. "They were getting their manicures, their facials, pedicures, massages while the American people were footing the bill."

And they call this journalism? While I'm sure it was true that AIG spent a bundle on similar functions when Greenberg was still in charge of AIG - when it was entirely their prerogative to spend what they wanted as long as the shareholders didn't object -someone didn't notice that Greenberg was forced out of AIG by Elliot Spitzer, then AG for NY State. When the "billions from the US treasury and the Fed" arrived - it's not insignificant to note that they arrived in the form of a secured loan - secured with first priority pledges of assets held by AIG which were not immediately liquid. The essence of the AIG loan was a bridge loan, a secured bridge loan, which will allow AIG to liquidate assets over a period of about one year. These are simple, publicly available facts - and yet the journalists who cover this stuff take those facts and generalize them to the point of creating disinformation. Argue about the wisdom of supplying AIG with a secured loan, but don't call it a bailout (which implies a grant) and get off the high horse about the expenditures. If a bank had made a secured loan to AIG - they would not gain veto power over the AIG budget for sales conferences and perks like Spa treatments.

[joe fonebone]

HGTV is the gay channel....have you noticed all the home shows have at least 1 gay guy, 1 gay gal, 1 woman confused about her sexuality, and 1 guy who is heterosexual but dumb as a bag of rocks....

[freekitty]

Imagine the POTUS is a crook. That’s what Obama is; a crook and a thug. And that Bill Ayers, friend of Obama, just doesn’t get it. No one likes cop killers.

[Prokopton]

Argue about the wisdom of supplying AIG with a secured loan, but don't call it a bailout (which implies a grant) and get off the high horse about the expenditures.

I have to disagree with you. The "loan" was made by the Federal Government from taxpayer money because the "loan" was not commercially viable and no one in their right mind would have made it with their own money. It was a bailout. You don't have to be on a "high horse" about the profligate expenditures, just an American taxpayer who is on the hook for the "loan" and who feels abused when those they have bailed out spend money like drunken sailors while the taxpayers have to be frugal just to be able to pay the taxes that provide for the bail out.

We are getting screwed, there's no way to gloss over it.

[Pessimist]

“BoA recently paid billions to settle investigations by various attorney generals for Countrywide’s mis-selling of risky loans to thousands who could not afford them.”

No doubt taxpayer’s money, too. Nifty, huh?