The US government started in on an immedite program of "loaning" monies to the very firms on Wall Street who were stating again and again that theywere solvent, and that they were not like Lehman Brothers.
But as we "loaned" tens of billions of dollars, that money propped them up. This is quasi-legal at the very best, and probably totally totally illegal.
When you consider that Tim Geithner was at that time the very head of the New York Fed Reserve, and that it was his manipulations of the situation that allowed for Lehman to be tanked, while Lehman's competitors for the most part go on to succeed, and while Lil TImmy's friends at AIG and Goldman Sachs made out big time, sometimes those two firms just shuffle dmoney back and forth and forth and back, it is appalling that Obama went on to appoint lil Timmy to head the US Treasury. (But then, this illustrates how Obama is nothing more than a Corporate Spokesperson for Big Banking, Big Energy, including nuclear power, Big Pesticide, Big Military, Big Pharma and Big Insurance etc.)
Bernanke went on to loan and loan and loan.
And yes, some of this falls under the heading of discount window and turnaround stuff. But again experts claim that some 4.7 trillions of those dolalrs will not be repaid. (I am thinking off the top of my head, that William Black may be one of those with that number.) The "legit" media of course, only goes to say tht some 1.2 trillions of those dollars will not be repaid. (Such economic-concerned media outlets as Forbes and Bloomberg's)
A lot of this discussion relates to what the word "is" is. If some firm is given twenty billions of dollars as a loan, and they pay it back, but are immediately allowed a fifteen billion dollars of monies as an offset on their taxes, (a tax rebate, it would be called, if you or I had that amount coming) - did they really pay back 15 those fifteen billions of dollars? I mean, technically they did pay it back, as is it their fault if the bought and paid for government officials offer them a tax rebate?
When you consider that Wells Fargo bank accomplished the acquisiton of Wachovia without paying out one red cent of its own, through all the help it got from people like Geithner, then you see the sorry sorry state we are in.
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