naked capitalism

Anonymous says:

Hmm. Perhaps it would be just easier if we would let AIG in charge of running the printing press.

I also recommend passing an executive order to make it official that all ordinary Americans are now indentured to their banking system.

FairEconomist says:

We’re going to see a lot of this with bailouts of these companies with opaque cooked books (which is almost all of them). The first bailout won’t cover everything because so much is unknown. A nationalized Lehman would have come with a nasty 100 billion surprise too. I expect you’ll see more begging from UBS and from the banks the Brits nationalized as well, probably in just a few weeks. Fannie and Freddie will be next year after the elections. This will be a chronic problem given that all the Western nations have committed to unlimited blind bailouts.

Anonymous says:

From the Fed’s FAQ

How will the Federal Reserve report lending under the CPFF?

The Federal Reserve will not publicly disclose the individual issuers or the amounts provided to individual issuers by the CPFF. Balance sheet items related to the SPV and CPFF will be reported on the H.4.1 weekly statistical release titled “Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Condition Statement of Federal Reserve Banks.” There will be an explanatory cover note on the release when the items are added.

Anonymous says:

One hundred and twenty two thousand million dollars !!!!!!!

What would have happened if AIG was forced into BK?

Criminal. Totally criminal.

Dan W says:

Lessons from Gandhi…and Billy Ray Valentine (Capricorn)
Dear Fellow Victims:

Together, daily, we share news of the latest in the greatest financial ripoff in the history of history. Billions—literally—of human beings left to suffer and freeze and starve over the next 5-10 years, as the Plutocrats and Kleptocrats hunker down with their riches, their mansions, their Lamborghinis, etc.

Well, I take my lessons from 2 sources: Mohandas K. Gandhi and Billy Ray Valentine. Gandhi you know, I hope. Valentine, played gracefully by a young Ediie Murphy, was the guy in TRADING PLACES who goes from being poor to rich, at the expense of Winthorp, played gracefully by a skinny Dan Aykroyd. ANYWAY….

So, here’s the point:

1. Gandhi organizes a day of “fasting and prayer” to protest British rules in India. Of course, a day of fasting and prayer also means 500 million Indian workers off the job: no trains, no buses, no public works—which effectively leaves 100,000 British ex-pats in India totally cut off from the world. A bad day for the Brits, to say the least.
2. Billy Ray Valentine (Capricorn) points out to Lewis Winthorp–as Winthorp cleans out his shotgun barrel in preparation, one can only assume, for a knee-cap shattering meeting with The Dukes brothers (Randolph and Mortimer Duke, of Duke and Duke Commodities, INC.)—that the way you really get a rich person back is NOT by shooting him, but instead by making him poor.

OK, you with me so far?

Now for the union of Gandhi and Valentine.

It seems to me that the real criminals in all of this are the bankers, the folks in the financial industry, the Paulsons and Bernankes and Fulds and all of the folks who have become wealthy on the backs—and on the debt—of the rest of us. This system of FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING, a system in which money = debt, this system can only function and make millionaires of a few while leaving the rest in the dust if and only if the rest of us choose to play.

Look, what terrified Paulson more than anything—and then he convinced Bush to be terrified, and he convinced the scumbags in Congress to be terrified—-was the idea of a financial system, whose very existence is dependent upon growth and therefore upon more and more debt, collapsing because the borrowing cycle had been shut down.

These total assholes admitted it, and they assumed the rest of us wouldn’t really get it. They said, flat out, that we are risking a systemic financial collapse unless we can get the credit markets working again.

Look, I want you to PLEASE watch this video RIGHT NOW. Afterwards, come back to my post.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

OK, now…here comes my thesis…well, not really…ummmm….more like my proposal.

Let’s stop playing! I say, get together with people in your community and come up with a plan so that (a) everyone can eat and (b) everyone can stay warm and (c) everyone has water to drink and (d) EVERYONE STOPS PAYING FOR THINGS THAT ARE MAKING THE MOTHERFUCKERS RICH!!!

To hell with paying your mortgage, and certainly to hell with paying taxes! Think about taxes for one second. All of our taxes have to go up, because we have, to this point, lent the FED over a TRILLION dollars—and Scumbag Paulson is giving all of OUR money (money that we have earned through our hard work as teachers, and carpenters, and farmers and police officers, etc.) to the banks so that the credit market will loosen so that the banks will loan us back our money…at interest!!! I say, no more!!!!!!!!!!

I say we need to come together in our communities and protect each other and help each other and go on strike from giving our hard earned money away so that amoral scum like Henry Paulson can make millions more dollars off of us. I am done with that shit!

We cannot do this alone. Alone we are pariah who get nicked by the FBI and thrown in jail and called extremists. I say, this needs to be a mass movement. A mainstream movement of protest against a financial system that CAN ONLY SURVIVE on the growing debt burden of the ordinary folk.

I may not be William Wallace, and while I like Mel Gibson as an actor I find some of his views about religion rather abhorrent…but I will say this: It is time to claim…OUR FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!