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  • Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

    Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

    by Catherine Austin Fitts and Carolyn Betts, Esq.


    (1) Crime that pays is crime that stays.

    There is reason to believe that Wall Street and those they represent are holding loans without collateral, multiple loans secured by the same properties, and other fraudulent instruments among the “troubled assets.” Based on the secret “Treasury Conference Call” with 800 Wall Street insiders, we know the deal proposed to be passed by Congress isn’t the real deal promised to Wall Street.


    (2) This smells like obstruction of justice.

    Bail-out without due diligence of so called “troubled assets” is a perfect way to hide documentation of financial crimes. It is also a perfect means to launder both the past ill-gotten gains and new federal money spent recklessly and without necessary safeguards and oversight mechanisms. Be very suspicious when they tell you “we just can’t tell what’s in these troubled assets.” We can assure you that the federal government has field offices all across the country that deal with significant amounts of real estate and mortgage assets on a dailyl basis. If Treasury refuses for more than a decade to comply with the laws, with approximately $4 trillion missing (and counting), it is not competent to manage $700 billion of taxpayer money while its arm is twisted by Wall Street.


    (3) Wall Street owes the federal government money.

    We need to get stolen money back from the banks that served as depositories for the US government (including trillions for which the Pentagon and HUD could not account) and punish them, not create another opportunity for them to game the system and engage in criminal enterprises to rob consumers. To the extent there has been regulatory wrong-doing, let’s not let the miscreants leave town with the evidence.



    (4) Good guys are shut out.

    A bail-out provides no way for honest leaders to come to the fore and use their creativity and expertise to restore balance and integrity to the system or for unproductive and poorly-managed banks that contribute to current over-capacity in the banking system to die a dignified death.


    (5) This results in more investment in the “bubble economy.”

    Spending massive amounts on non-productive uses (“buying” worthless credit default swaps, mortgages with no collateral and derivatives, which could even include the derivatives used to manipulate the precious metals markets) as opposed to productive uses (repairing infrastructure, creating alternative energy systems, supporting inventing and production of “green” products) is inflationary.


    This bail-out will drive prices of food, water and energy up for the people who can least afford it.


    (6) Bail-out does not result in capital circulating in healthy ways.

    The bail-out of Wall Street and too-big-to-fail banks and insurance companies that are getting bigger by the minute by swallowing up other failing financial institutions (and creating more institutions that are “too big to fail”) does not result in trickle-down to those whose money was stolen in recent swindles (S&L, dot.com, current housing crisis), i.e., the taxpayers/middle class and working poor.


    (7) These arrangements will result in more corruption.

    Centralized “fixes” are sure to result in black holes, no-bid contracts and other scandals.


    (8) The bail-out drains the real economy, rather than invests in the real economy.

    The US economy can’t be productive or grow if consumers don’t have jobs and can’t afford to purchase goods and services. Real stimulation of Main Street is accomplished through productive investment, not bail-outs that shift money to unproductive sectors. We should use all of our precious resources to reinvest in our people in the real economy.


    (9) It props up sectors that need to downsize and consolidate.

    There is significant overcapacity in the financial and banking sectors. Brainpower and talent needs to stop blowing financial bubbles and shift to economic activities that create real value.


    (10) It is a temporary “fix” to keep Wall Street afloat until after the election.

    Our resources are better invested in permanent, long-term solutions. This bail-out will not fix anything. Rather, it will help the perpetrators get away and ensure that the ultimate day of reckoning is worse.


    The Administration wants to drain the real economy to bail out Wall Street. It seems to us that the more appropriate plan would be to require Wall Street to return the $4 trillion plus that is missing and use that to rebuild the real economy.


    We think the time has come to reverse the flow. Go to any business school in the country. That is what they teach. Money should move out of unproductive sectors into productive sectors. The bail-out does just the opposite.


    “Just say NO!”

  • #2
    Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

    I thikn people opposed to the bailout lack an imagination.

    No one here can imagine how bad it would be a year from now, and we'd yearn for the opportunity to bailout.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

      Couldna put it better myself!!!!

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

        Phirang is spot on. This laundry list is lacking in imagination. "Punish the banks" also contains an inexorable illogic, in that in order to prevent a meltdown you cannot avoid in some way having to recapitalise the banks.

        Originally posted by phirang View Post
        I thikn people opposed to the bailout lack an imagination.

        No one here can imagine how bad it would be a year from now, and we'd yearn for the opportunity to bailout.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

          I'm beginning to think the Paulson plan will make things worse. It is a massive diversion of capital that should be directed elsewhere to productive (in the real sense) ventures that actually have a future.
          Some other kind of fund maybe, or ideally a scandi-style takedown, but the current plan just looks like jobs for the boys.

          Likewise the banks sucking at the Fed's teat seems wrong. Why borrow interbank when you can borrow cheaper and in unlimited amounts at the Fed? The fed is crowding out private capital. I have never been an 'abolish the Fed' kind of thinker at all - but now I am coming round to that point of view. They are making things worse.
          It's Economics vs Thermodynamics. Thermodynamics wins.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

            Originally posted by T
            Likewise the banks sucking at the Fed's teat seems wrong. Why borrow interbank when you can borrow cheaper and in unlimited amounts at the Fed? The fed is crowding out private capital. I have never been an 'abolish the Fed' kind of thinker at all - but now I am coming round to that point of view. They are making things worse.
            We've already seen the Fed's term lending facilities affecting systemic numbers.

            The question is whether the system can survive without this subsidy.

            I believe it cannot; I simply do not fully agree that throwing more money at the problem fixes it.

            It hasn't yet - why then will this time be different?

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

              I thikn people opposed to the bailout lack an imagination.

              No one here can imagine how bad it would be a year from now, and we'd yearn for the opportunity to bailout.
              This is condescending B.S.

              I and many other thoughtful people are perfectly capable of imagining how bad it can get. It is not that we are against a bailout, but rather this monstrously atrocious one!

              Please do not paint in such broad strokes those of us opposed to this bailout as unimaginative nincompoops. I assure you we are not.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

                Originally posted by phirang View Post
                I thikn people opposed to the bailout lack an imagination.

                No one here can imagine how bad it would be a year from now, and we'd yearn for the opportunity to bailout.
                Originally posted by Lukester View Post
                Phirang is spot on. This laundry list is lacking in imagination. "Punish the banks" also contains an inexorable illogic, in that in order to prevent a meltdown you cannot avoid in some way having to recapitalise the banks.
                Luke, you too have fallen into making a too broad a brush false accusation. No where in CAF's piece does she say "Punish the banks". That some -- hell, a lot of folks -- should be punished or penalized for corruption, fraud and outright theft, is as justice should be!

                If you read CAF carefully you would understand she is not asking to "punish the banks" as in all banks. That is plainly mischaracterizing or willful ignorance on your part.

                This is what I object too, and rightfully so!

                This bailout as conceived is not the right way to go about resolving our problems, and for you to pretend it is and those of us opposed to it, who also think CAF knows better, for having lived in it, the belly of this beast up close and inside out, as folks without imagination, is extremely annoying!

                One would think, after all the grief you've taken for siding with Peak Oil here, that you would be more considerate on this score before disparaging the considered opinions of others.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

                  the system is corrupt and spent, more of the same is more of the same....I think its you who lack the imagination. Vested interests need their comeuppance and middle america needs a chance to rise again, that means a plan more along the lines of the king plan or many other more sane plans out there. You seem to enjoy the fact the US gets this free ride in the short run but you lack the imagination to see 99.9% of the world gets screwed, including you, in the long run under the current system.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

                    What is wrong with people here?

                    Taking out a loan does not solve a solvency problem. The next step to make everything "better" is to suspend the mark to market accounting. Then everything is "healthy" again. What a giant head trip.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

                      cathy's got an ax to grind. what's up? what's in it for her?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

                        Hope we don't misunderstand each other here Godraz. I was not making any blanket statement of my own regarding the merit of CAF's points. I respect a lot of her writing well enough. I merely point out that there are some thorny issues in there on the flip side of the very real and burning ethical issues. While we are taking time to seek justice (and you seem to overlook that objectors to your priorities like me also adhere to all the points of justice you "no-bailout" guys are getting steamed about) we have to keep a very, very careful eye on what happens with "deflation gravity" once that big toilet bowl swirl gets into motion.

                        The gravity pull is exponential - like a black hole, you look across it and gauge distance / time and think "well the center of the hole still looks a long way away and we have time to hammer out a more just deal". But the apparent distance may be dangerously deceiving. In a massively indebted system (far greater than 1929 BTW, and look at the carnage that resulted from that!) the "pull of gravity" from that black hole can be exponential with a very, very sharp "no return" threshold. Once past that threshold, you see reflation requiring factors of ten, and then factors of twenty more firepower to effect any braking action.

                        That's how I feel about this. I don't know if that analogy holds here - but every one of us can feel something **very large** yawning open right around now across the US and across the world. We are looking at you guys, flushed with indignation about the horrific ethics of this bailout, and armed with textbook untried arguments about how close economies can skirt to the edge of black holes while maintaining some braking power - and we wonder "how the heck do these guys know how far along they even are in the process". We estimate you guys don't really know how close we are to doing a far more severe splat - and so we say "get the braking engines firing HARD right now, and then let's promise to vigorously clean up the inequities after we've secured the imponderables of massive danger just a little bit better.

                        I think it is this innate conservatism which prompted EJ"s position, and I endorse it. I don't want your preoccupations with ethics, however real they may be, to decimate or experiment any further with my future, along with yours, while we are quite evidently taking a few leisurely circles around the toilet bowl prior to the big flush. Moral hazard, Misesian Economics Purism, whatever. I don't want to be in the petri-dish of your deliberating the firing of those braking engines more than another 24 hours max. If you lived in a different country than me, I'd say "go to it, be my guest".

                        But I have to share the outcome with you, and my gut tells me we are a weight as big as an asteroid speeding at a hard surface. We need to fire the braking engines immediately. Call me a sissy, or even lacking in ethics here. I don't mind. I think EJ has a better sense of governance of the larger picture than does CAF here.

                        Originally posted by godraz View Post
                        Luke, you too have fallen into making a too broad a brush false accusation. No where in CAF's piece does she say "Punish the banks". That some -- hell, a lot of folks -- should be punished or penalized for corruption, fraud and outright theft, is as justice should be!

                        If you read CAF carefully you would understand she is not asking to "punish the banks" as in all banks. That is plainly mischaracterizing or willful ignorance on your part.

                        This is what I object too, and rightfully so!

                        This bailout as conceived is not the right way to go about resolving our problems, and for you to pretend it is and those of us opposed to it, who also think CAF knows better, for having lived in it, the belly of this beast up close and inside out, as folks without imagination, is extremely annoying!

                        One would think, after all the grief you've taken for siding with Peak Oil here, that you would be more considerate on this score before disparaging the considered opinions of others.
                        Last edited by Contemptuous; October 03, 2008, 01:14 AM.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Ten Reasons Not To Bail Out Wall Street

                          I'm sorry Luke, but your reply parses my post in a way that just doesn't add up!

                          Where has EJ endorsed THIS particular BAILOUT? A bailout, yes, but not AFAIK this one.

                          As for CAF, she too is for a bailout, but not this one. She's for one that helps people first, and is also for infrastructure and alt energy investments. So as for her not seeing the big picture, I think you are just wrong.

                          She knows better than anyone else I know, EJ included, what this Bailout will likely result in: the biggest fleece job and vastest money laundering operation ever undertaken, all of which only further enriches the crooks.

                          We shall see if this results in the outcome you think it will. I don't believe it will get us there at all. To do that will require something much different than what we did get shafted with.

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