OT ~ Obama Owned ~ You Can BANK On It
JanO...@aol.com
By Ann Coulter
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are bristling with the
news that Republicans have decided now is the time to suck up to Wall
Street. As the saying goes, there is no truer friend than a Wall
Street arbitrageur -- they are the salt-of-the-earth, the most loyal
men who ever drew a breath!
What are Republicans thinking? While not every money-manipulator on
Wall Street deserves to be treated like a heroin dealer, lots do.
Could the Republicans be a little more discriminating in picking up
the Democrats' old friends?
The Democrats are acting as if they want to punish everyone in the
financial services industry, including the innocent, while the
Republicans seem to want to protect everyone on Wall Street, including
the guilty.
How about just punishing the guilty? The Democrats can't do that
because the list of Wall Street's biggest offenders may turn out to be
eerily similar to the list of Obama's biggest campaign contributors.
Employees from Goldman Sachs gave more to the Obama campaign than any
other organization except the University of California -- with
Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase quickly following in sixth and seventh
place.
Whatever Obama has in mind for punishing the financial industry, I
promise you, he won't punish his friends. After JPMorgan CEO Jamie
Dimon took a $17 million bonus this week, and Goldman CEO Lloyd
Blankfein got a $9 million bonus, Obama said he didn't begrudge them
their bonuses, saying, "I know both those guys."
Obama seems to be hoping that his vague bluster about "obscene
profits" will lure Republicans into embracing Wall Street welfare
recipients -- thereby losing Americans forever.
Never bet against Republicans being outwitted.
Risk-taking and speculation are good. But the Democrats' crony
capitalism is the worst of both worlds: risk-taking without any real
risk for the risk-takers. It's like gambling with your rich daddy's
money, except we're the rich daddy.
Obama, like the rest of his party, is an ideologue who doesn't
understand or particularly like the free market. He fundamentally
believes in the efficacy of the welfare state, whether the beneficiary
is a layabout single mother or a rich Wall Street banker.
As Peter Schweizer describes in his magnificent book "Architects of
Ruin," the Democrats have been bailing out investment houses from
their bad bets since the Clinton administration. The bankers got all
the profits when their risky bonds were paying -- and then gave
massive donations to their Democratic benefactors. But once the bets
went bad, it was the taxpayers' problem.
Heavily leveraged securities packages put together by Goldman Sachs
and others were the HIV virus that killed the American economy. And
the reason investment firms piled leverage on leverage on leverage was
that they knew the government would bail them out if their house of
cards collapsed.
On one hand, Goldman put together toxic securities packages for their
clients, but on the other hand, Goldman knew the mortgage securities
being sold on the market were crap, so they also took out lots of
insurance with AIG on crappy products being traded on the market.
It would be as if, anticipating a major earthquake, Goldman bought
massive insurance policies on every house on the San Andreas fault
line.
There's nothing wrong with taking risks and making bets, provided that
if you bet wrong or if you bankrupt your betting partner with wild
gambles: You lose.
The problem was that Goldman and AIG, among many others, knew they
wouldn't lose. Twenty years of Democratic bailouts have led them to
understand that when their bets go bad, the taxpayer will save them.
Which is exactly what happened.
When the earthquake hit toxic securities, the insurer, AIG, couldn't
pay up. Normally, that would result in the insurer going bankrupt, an
orderly proceeding in bankruptcy court to distribute AIG's assets, and
Goldman recovering only a portion of the insurance payout on the
crappy products.
But instead of AIG going bankrupt and Goldman taking a hit, the U.S.
taxpayer made good on AIG's securities insurance. In a deal arranged
by former Goldman CEO and current Obama BFF, Hank Paulson, Goldman
ended up being paid -- by you -- an astonishing 100 cents on the
dollar.
So Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's boast that his firm didn't want TARP
money and has paid it all back is completely irrelevant. Goldman took
billions of dollars -- that's millions with a "b" -- of the AIG
bailout money. How about paying that back?
It took The New York Times a year and a half to figure out Goldman's
jackpot winnings from the AIG bailout -- $12.9 billion, according to
the Times -- so the first thing Republicans ought to do is hold
hearings to determine who benefited from the Democrats' crony
capitalism, and not take their bluster as fact.
The next step should be to get all the bailout money back.
When the government steps in to save the very financial institutions
that poisoned the nation's financial system with contaminated
securities and derivatives -- all while the bankers get to keep the
fees and bonuses on their bad bets -- we are not talking about a free
market.
We're talking about regular Americans being forced to foot the bill
for the gambling habits of left-wing multimillionaires by buying the
malefactors more chips every time they lose.
Republicans should defend any investment houses that never benefited
from a government bailout. But anyone who took huge gambles, lost and
got bailed out with taxpayer money should be tortured and then shot,
miraculously brought back to life, tortured some more, then shot a few
more times.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And in my own opinion, honest Democrats, Conservatives and
Independents should also
defend honest investment houses. Any problem with that?
Jan Eric Orme
Frank Howell
Nope.
--
Frank Howell
JanO...@aol.com
Here ya go, Frank. This just in.
Indymac Slap In Our Faces Special Sweeetheart Deals....
....(if you have big powerful friends).
Watch ALL of this:
http://www.thinkbigworksmall.com/mypage/player/tbws/23119/-3475
Let me know if you are pissed off yet.
Jan Eric Orme
Frank Howell
I was aware of the Indymac and other sweetheart bank deals last year.
There's just not enough time to wade through all of them.
--
Frank Howell
NoMapsDude
Kind of like wading through the noxious redundant
all caps Spam here?
-NMD
Hunter Hampton
<Blonde...@aol.com> wrote:
>Kind of like wading through the noxious redundant
>all caps Spam here?
>
>-NMD
Or 167 lines of previous posts to get to this gem...
Hunter