Matt Taibbi Interview Transcript (Democracy Now)

[Thailandnotes]

He begins with Wisconsin and Ohio. This is rich...

MATT TAIBBI: Well, it’s an incredible story. I mean, just to back up and provide some context, I think, for this Wisconsin thing, and especially for the Ohio thing, given what their governor used to do for a living—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, he was an employee for Lehman Brothers, and he was—

AMY GOODMAN: This is Governor Kasich.

MATT TAIBBI: Governor Kasich, yeah, and he was intimately involved with selling—getting the state of Ohio’s pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers and buy mortgage-backed securities. And of course they lost all that money. And this, broadly, was really what the mortgage bubble and the financial crisis was all about. It was essentially a gigantic criminal fraud scheme where all the banks were taking mismarked mortgage-backed securities, very, very dangerous, toxic subprime loans, they were chopping them up and then packaging them as AAA-rated investments, and then selling them to state pension funds, to insurance companies, to Chinese banks and Dutch banks and Icelandic banks.

Part 2 which didn't make the show, but is on the website. Highly recommend the whole thing.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/2...nt_wall_street

[dcarrigg]

Re: Matt Taibbi Interview Transcript (Democracy Now)

He begins with Wisconsin and Ohio. This is rich...

MATT TAIBBI: Well, it’s an incredible story. I mean, just to back up and provide some context, I think, for this Wisconsin thing, and especially for the Ohio thing, given what their governor used to do for a living—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, he was an employee for Lehman Brothers, and he was—

AMY GOODMAN: This is Governor Kasich.

MATT TAIBBI: Governor Kasich, yeah, and he was intimately involved with selling—getting the state of Ohio’s pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers and buy mortgage-backed securities. And of course they lost all that money. And this, broadly, was really what the mortgage bubble and the financial crisis was all about. It was essentially a gigantic criminal fraud scheme where all the banks were taking mismarked mortgage-backed securities, very, very dangerous, toxic subprime loans, they were chopping them up and then packaging them as AAA-rated investments, and then selling them to state pension funds, to insurance companies, to Chinese banks and Dutch banks and Icelandic banks.

Part 2 which didn't make the show, but is on the website. Highly recommend the whole thing.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/2...nt_wall_street

+1. Great post Thailand. I wanted to put one more quote in from the article:

Anyway, this SEC investigator named Gary Aguirre wanted permission to go interview John Mack, and his superiors at the SEC told him—they basically told him that he couldn’t, and the reason they said was because Mack has, quote-unquote, "powerful political connections." At the time, he was a Ranger, one of Bush’s fundraising Rangers. He would later become a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. So he played both sides of the fence. This, again, is very typical of Wall Street. And Aguirre, when he pressed the matter, he was fired by the SEC.

[don]

Re: Matt Taibbi Interview Transcript (Democracy Now)

It's now available.

[oddlots]

Re: Matt Taibbi Interview Transcript (Democracy Now)

The whole 30 minute interview is now up:

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/201...street_in_jail