Secret and Lies of the Bailout

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104 ^

[Orange1998]

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

[Orange1998]

"At one meeting to discuss the original bailout bill – at 11 a.m. on September 18th, 2008 – Paulson actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse "within 24 hours."

So what has been done to correct the problem? Strange how you can go from normal to financial disaster over overnight and nobody gives a damn. Are we really living on the edge of abyss.

[whitedog57]

Paradox: Rolling Stone loves Obama and the Dems, yet they are the crew that voted for bailouts and perpetuated them. True, Obamao wasn’t President when the bailout happened, but he definitely perpetuated the fraud.

[freedomfiter2]

Are we really living on the edge of abyss.

No, that was four years ago. Now we’re getting light headed from the free fall.

[freedomfiter2]

True, Obamao wasn’t President when the bailout happened, but he definitely perpetuated the fraud.

Both parties are run by the same clan of crooks. Well, if they aren’t the same ones they are first cousins three different ways.

[yoe]

These weren't hillbillies, this was the full force of the Chicago Political Mob and a politically correct congress and senate.....just as Obamacare is NOT a health bill, it is as Justice Roberts said Obamacare IS A TAX. Jessie Jackson's Rainbow Coalition paved the Politically Correct way for EXTORTION on Wall Street and in our banks. Eric Holder, the most racially progressive AG ever, called us a NATION OF COWARDS. The Politically Correct Lilly Livered pundits, talking heads, Black Caucus, and MSM said we were Racists if we disagreed one ioata from the head Community Organizer. By the way...community organizer has for years been an acronym for Communist.

[Baynative]

Rolling Stone is the "SNOPES" of tabloid newsprint. Anything they say about Obama is spun for low comprehension voter consumption.

[iopscusa]

Yoe, kudos on this righteous rant. Paulson and his boss GWB need to be investigated along with everyone in Congress and the FRS, SEC, HUD, Frannie, Freddy...the lamp-post of DC need to be decorated by many of theses criminals!

[Wolfie]

Nothing has been done, nothing will be done. The banks own the U.S., plain and simple. They tank again, and they’ll take us down with them. But, hey, at least they’re not over-regulated.