October 12, 2008
Over the past several months, we have witnessed an unprecedented financial storm stirred up by the irrationally exuberant, Wall Street welfare parasites and their Fed-God, Ben Bernanke, and the usual enablers who roam the halls of the regime in power. It’s no fluke that according to the Chinese system of astrology, we”ve entered The Year of the Rat.
The federal bailout of negligent Wall Street firms is analogous to the government enacting laws that enable certain people to visit a casino, spin the roulette wheel, and pocket gobs of cash when they win”and if they lose, get subsidized so they can go back and do it all over again.
After two votes in Congress, and a week of disinformation, scare tactics, and threats, the glitterati of Wall Street have finally realized their ambition: They have managed a coup that enables them to occupy the halls of power, overseeing and manipulating the very financial markets that either make them or break them. Consider them “made” and the rest of us broke.
On Monday, September 29, the House originally rejected the bailout bill, with 228 brave “nays” stopping Bush & Co. in their tracks. As the week went on, congressmen were bought and bullied, and many lost their nerve. Tons of pork was tossed in to buy votes. Representative Gabrielle Giffords voted “nay” on Monday, but then her vote was purchased with some solar tax credits, which were added to the final version. Other morsels include auto-racing tracks, tax benefits for fishermen, welfare for rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and a healthcare provision forcing insurance companies to provide for specified mental health coverage.
When pork didn”t work, ultimatums were issued. Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, whose a
speech was captured on C-Span, noted that the Bush administration was “creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere.” Accordingly, he stated that members of Congress were brought in line with fear tactics, including prophesies of economic chaos and a crashing stock market if the bill was turned back a second time. Some members of Congress were even told they”d see martial law in America if the bill wasn”t approved.
After the disquieting rejection of the first bailout attempt, the fearmongers from government, Wall Street, and assorted special interests went to work on the public. Pro-establishment analysts turned out in packs to appear on FOX, CNN, BubbleVision, and Bloomberg to circulate their scare tactics and frighten people into supporting the bailout. They sold the rescue of Wall Street’s financial class as a measure that would benefit America’s working class. Middle-class folks were told that there would be no cash available for small businesses, and this would lead to business owners being unable to make payroll, workers being laid off, and capital investments stalling in an illiquid market. Furthermore, a non-bailout scenario would imperil our 401k accounts and our pensions, leaving us penniless in old age. There were also the “experts” who told Americans they would no longer have easy access to cash for everyday household purchases due to credit markets clamping down.
The strategy was to convince Americans that a non-bailout would take away our free-spending standard of living and result in a series of catastrophic events that would destroy our families and the futures of our children.
Legislators everywhere declared that America was in a state of emergency, with sound evidence neither offered nor expected. The bailout and takeover of the financial system had to happen now, before the public had the time to form an educated opinion and assess the long-term consequences of such action.
In addition, Herr Bush has played a prominent crisis-mongering role. The president told us that the financial world would implode without his bailout, and worse, he stressed that the pact was beneficial for all of us on Main Street. You see, in BushSpeak, the bailout bill is actually an “investment,” something that will benefit the taxpayers who are robbed to supply Washington’s welfare stream. Bush has implied, on numerous occasions, that the tax dollars “invested” in shoddy assets owned by big banks will be paid back because this bailout will be a success. Since no profit or loss can be calculated in terms of a government redistribution of wealth, and because there’s no way to calculate a return of “investment,” how can “success” be quantified?
Bush, who often treads in the fog of the unknown, is explicitly suggesting that a compulsory redistribution of wealth will benefit the victims of the theft rather than the recipients of the booty.
But if the Fed’s bailout proposal is such a great idea, why are there no private investors who are willing to take on this exceptional opportunity? Why aren”t they lining up at the doors of big banks going belly-up?
As a part of the bailout scheme, Bush’s Treasury Secretary “Hank” Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs and an unelected cabinet secretary, has been granted unchecked powers to manipulate the financial markets. He named Neel Kashkari to head the new “Office of Financial Stability.” Kashkari is a Treasury guy and before that was a Goldman Sachs guy. Goldman Sachs is bailing out Goldman Sachs & Friends, and the Wall Street Elites are building a stronghold from which they will create all of the ground rules and hand out the goodies to preferential parties. When players play the game and make the rules as they go along, they don”t tend to lose. As a result, those who are empowered by favorable intervention will get richer, and the powerless middle class and poor can only get poorer.
The slicksters on Wall Street subsist by separating the folks on Main Street from their money. And now, with the bailout and unparalleled grab of power, Henry Paulson and his Wall Street posse have the full authority of law to commence unconstitutional actions, with no one to obstruct their arrangements. America’s founders, who believed that a system of checks and balances was necessary to deny potential despots, would have considered this to be tyranny.
