It's Halloween! As candy, costumes and parties parse the night, we have our own goblins, ghouls and ghosts haunting economic policy.
Our current trickster is Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, with his keys to the treasury purse via the Congress approved bail out
The United Steelworkers President, Leo W. Gerard, spelled out in a letter how the US taxpayer is being robbed blind. He does not mince words. An excerpt:
The Chosen Ones. I flipped on the local news late last night and saw a local bank CEO announce they have received millions of money from the bail out even though they don't need it. Images and drawings trying to explain how giving taxpayer money to some of the most consumer unfriendly banks would help the taxpayer abounded from the infomercial newscast. Arrows and redirects flooded a white board where one could have written corporate public relations B.S. clip in it's place. Paulson is helping the worse bank in Oregon, notorious for old growth timber clear cutting. The CEO said he would probably use the money for acquisitions, consolidation.
The above image is from the United States Treasury agreement (pdf) on how much it will pay the Bank of New York Mellon for running the auctions to buy up toxic assets as proposed in the bail out.
Congress Presentative Brad Sherman (CA-27th) is strongly speaking out on the latest version of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Bail Out Bill) and in particular exposing how foreign banks, investors will get billions and billions of American taxpayer money.
One must wonder why Congress is hell bent on passing a plan when so many economists are questioning it even working at all and while other more proven approaches are available.
Congressman Peter DeFazio issued a press release showing the the bitterness of these so called sweeteners being dangled before our representatives on Capital Hill:
Bailout legislation protecting domestic deposits in Irish national banks was signed into law by President Mary McAleese at 3:30 PM (Irish time).
President Mary McAleese has this evening signed legislation giving effect to the Government's €420 billion bank guarantee scheme.
A single-line statement from Áras an Uachtaráin just after 3.30pm said Mrs McAleese had signed the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill 2008 into law.
Unlike the US FDIC or the British Financial Services Compensation Scheme, Ireland has had, until today, a deposit insurance scheme to protect only something like the first €20,000 deposited by individuals into banks.
Let's take a moment to watch some videos on what is really happening on main street. Note, by voice vote the entire Senate turned down Bernie Sander's attempt to get the people who got filthy rich from this disaster....pay for it. Nope. Senators instead turn reality on it's head and claim they are not doing what they indeed are doing...bailing out Wall Street.
This one is about a Southern California Area Called the Inland Empire:
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