Enabling Acts for an Era of Greed

[autorank]

Enabling Acts for an Era of Greed -
The Money Party at Work

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0904/S00140.htm



Michael Collins

Huge majorities in both houses of Congress voted for legislation to allow the biggest bank heist of all time.
But this time, it was the banks pulling the heist.

Our financial system looks ruined beyond repair. The credit default swaps crisis is 40 or so times bigger than the real estate meltdown over subprime derivatives. The top 25 banks in the United States are loaded down with $13 trillion in credit default swaps and the deal is coming unraveled. If we accept the highly dubious assumption that the debt from the financial meltdown needs to be repaid by us, were looking at $43,000 a citizen right now. And we're just starting.

It didn't get that way by accident. There was special legislation that enabled the current crisis.

This was classic Money Party strategy and tactics.
The strategic goal was to turn Wall Street into a big casino for the "in crowd" of major investors, funds, and institutions. No rules and no regulations: "let the market take care of it" was the philosophy

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0904/S00140.htm

[seemslikeadream]

1. Don't hold your breath waiting for political action to fix the situation

and don't be surprised when it's ok to laugh at torture

[autorank]

4. If we let the politicians fix it

The people already figured this one out.

[althecat]

2. I found this fascinating.... the origins of the default swaps that now threaten to drown us all...

:kick:

[autorank]

6. Deep origins

Outlawed in 1906!!! NYT
http://electionfraudnews.com/News/bucketshops.pdf

Considered gambling from the start

Partners in Crime: The Telegraph Industry, Finance
Capitalism, and Organized Gambling, 1870-1920
David Hochfelder
IEEE History Center, Rutgers University


"One day in August 1887 President Abner Wright of the Chicago Board of Trade forcibly removed the instruments of the Postal Telegraph Company and the Baltimore and Ohio Telegraph Company from the floor of the exchange, literally throwing their equipment out of the building. A few months later, on the night of December 15, Wright discovered some mysterious electrical cables leading out of the basement of the exchange building. Thinking that they were telegraph lines, he cut them with an axe. 1 Wright was neither deranged nor a Luddite. Instead, his forceful actions were dramatic examples of the troublesome technological, cultural, and economic relationship between the telegraph industry, finance capitalism, and organized gambling in the United States during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era."

[Jim Sagle]

19. And yet this garbage was sold to us as "financial innovation."

The new 21st century paradigm that would yield a brave new free market world of fluffy globalist bunnies.

And now it turns this shit was already banned over 100 years ago. Everything old is new again.:-(

[autorank]

27. "fluffy globalist bunnies"

The idea of progress is vastly over rated. I really liked that William K. Black interview, seminal.
His point about most S&L CEO's and boards being honest with a 10% "perp-rate" was a good one. The
comparison to today's CEO's was devastating. They were all willing participants. This was too big
to miss. They should bring Black in as a special investigator or something. That would send a
great message.

How about the NYT 1906 article. Closed those 'bucket shops' down, just squeezed them. The idea
of "betting" on the market & corporate/state bonds was ridiculous then and it is now. Yet it
proceeds.

Here's an update from the fluffy guys:

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Who owns the credit default swaps on GM? Probably the same folks that bought credit default swaps on AIG!

From Denninger:

Here's the problem - I'm willing to bet that a huge percentage of those were written by AIG. (he was right)

The government has provided a history now that says that if you are a holder of CDS written by AIG, you will get 100 cents on the dollar, even if the notes don't default. In addition that 100 cents is above what you would normally get even if there IS a default, because normally you have to tender the defaulted bond or the payout is limited by the recovery, and recovery on a defaulted bond is almost never zero.

So in this case the winning play, if you're a big bondholder, is to tell GM to suck eggs; you'll get paid 100 cents on your CDS even though AIG has no money, because the taxpayer will make you whole on those CDS, even if the bonds have a recovery in bankruptcy.

In other words you could conceivably get more than 100 cents if you hold those bonds - so long as you also hold a CDS as a hedge

[Lucky Luciano]

44. Not true entirely...

When they talk of getting paid 100 cents on the dollar, it is net of recovery. So if GM defaults and recovery is 15%, then every $10MM in GM CDS gets paid $8.5MM - and that would be considered 100 cents on the dollar for the value of the CDS contract.

[Hannah Bell]

22. Thank you, interesting links. Another interesting case is the Panic of 1907,

which may have been deliberately set off by Morgan syndicate efforts to ruin the Heinze Brothers' NYC banking business - copper baron outsiders who'd beat the insiders, then challenged them in the finance biz.

http://www.high-lonesomebooks.com/cgi-bin/hlb/20101.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Hannah%20Bell/40

[autorank]

47. k*r Hannah Bell

Recommended reading. How similar it is to our current crisis in many ways. Heinze really ruffled
some feathers. His mining technique of digging deep on a small plot and fanning out reminded me of
the Iraqi claim that Kuwait was doing something similar before the invasion by Iraq way back.

This is a gem, from your journal:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Hannah%20Bell/40

"Mr. Morgan, we will have to close the Stock Exchange." Morgan turned to him and asked sharply, "What?" Thomas repeated, "We will have to close the Stock Exchange." Morgan asked, "At what time do you usually close it?" Thomas answered, "Why, at three o'clock." Morgan thundered, "It must not close one minute before that hour today!" emphasizing each word by keeping time with his right hand, middle finger pointing directly at the president of the Exchange.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14004846

At least somebody stepped up and took responsiblity. There's not much of that today. Just a lot of
shifting money that they'd like us to believe costs citizens nothing.

Thanks

[Lucky Luciano]

52. I never read up on the Panic of 1907 - only knew of its existence.

A very interesting read! A lot of parallels today - amazing how much more fragile things were back then that a single failed cornering of the market almost took down civilization!

[ihavenobias]

3. Very interesting as always.

K & R

[autorank]

16. Thnx!

[lonestarnot]

5. San don donia 43k per person.

[autorank]

9. Just think of it as that BMW we'll all never get;)

:hi:

[lonestarnot]

7. These two bastards! 7th Circuit judges Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook

[lonestarnot]

10. And these! Ended the United States w/o a shot!

Top row: Senators (S. 3283: Richard Lugar (R-IN), sponsor, cosponsors Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Tim Johnson (D-SD).plus cosponsors, Retired Senators Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL), Phil Graham, (R-TX), Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Bottom: Representatives (all retired) (H.R. 5600)Thomas Ewing (R-IL) sponsor; cosponsors Thomas Bliley, Jr. (R-VA), John J. LaFalce (D-NY), Jim Leach (R-IA).

[autorank]

11. Posner fancies himself a literary giant;)

http://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0812/S00378.htm

Oceans of Cash

Aaron Director was a lawyer and Ukrainian émigré whose sister had married Milton Friedman prior to the Second World War. That then became the connection which led to the Volker Fund's subsidy of Director and his association with the University of Chicago. He was one of the fund's "imports", alongside Von Mises. Director's collaborator at the University was Edward Levi who would eventually go on to become the President of the University and then Attorney General of the United States. Together, Director and Levi were instrumental in the development of the Chicago School of Economics, or the conquest by the Economics department of the School of Business and the Law School.

The Law School? What does law have to do with economics? The answer was everything according to Director, who developed a theory of "Law and Economics" (called, without tongue-in-cheek, the L&E "Movement'), stressing free-enterprise principles and the primacy of property law as well as measuring legal rulings with longer-term economic criteria. "He founded the Journal of Law & Economics in 1958... that helped to unite the fields of law and economics with far-reaching influence." The journal was, of course, funded in large part by what had now become a substantial network of Volker affiliates. Despite the fact that he himself wrote virtually nothing throughout his career, "Director influenced a generation of jurists, including Robert Bork, Richard Posner, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

[lonestarnot]

12. Fine batch of class warriors there.

[autorank]

13. And he's a legal genius too!

They've done a great job of making the absurd look like legitimate legal and business theory.

Imagine that - no rules, the market will just take care of itself.

Greenspan's apologia on realizing that we DO indeed need rules is the epitaph for this movement.
They just don't know it but they're finished.

[lonestarnot]

14. And they've finished us in the process!

[autorank]

15. For the moment. We'll be back.

With a vengeance;)

[Uncle Joe]

32. These three paragraphs nicely sum up the hypocrisy of the movement

with their own stated ideals, such as they are. They don't a give a flying fecal speck about those terms other than as for propaganda use in order to brain wash the people in to re-serfing them selves toward oligarch/mega-corporate royalty.

By separating the people from their naturally, most powerful advocate; true representative government, via demonizing "big government" in public, the corporate oligarchs and their propaganda megaphones can more readily sneak in to the back door with the weakened, prostituted entity in private and control it's actions in such sordid detail as not be suitable for family viewing.

The updated joke should be "I'm from the mega-corporation and I'm here to help," when you hear that, have lots of lubricant on hand.


<snip>

"Tens, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of books, hundreds of journals, dozens of universities, tens of thousands of people and thousands of professorships, and so on in a network touching virtually everyone in the "Western Democracies" - all of it centrally planned, all of it subsidized, none of it capable of existing by itself in the commercial marketplace or in the "marketplace of ideas" and all of it failing dozens of times until hooked into the river of cash produced by the simple subsidies of the rich designed to derail the "free" evolution of ideas as they were actually proceeding... is there any such example in all of human history of a "movement" so far at odds with its own self-proclaimed "principles"? No problem, though, for William S. Volker, for whom "belief" was always optional. Mr. Anonymous got exactly what he paid for.


*******************
For anyone who would attempt to understand class societies, the unmediated slogans of those same societies are the worst possible places to begin. For feudal societies, slogans such as "Chivalry", "Honor", "Fealty", "Chastity", "Virtue" and the like, underlay a social fabric that was monstrous, arbitrary, and treacherous. In most cases the slogans hid social truths which were the exact opposite of their rhetorical claims. The cruelty of the joke was not fully apparent until the end times of feudalism itself or, perhaps, even after.

In our own times, the slogans which have replaced these are those of "Freedom", "Liberty", "Democracy", "Enterprise", "Individuality", and so on. It is impossible to know the meaning of these as given and even more unlikely that one may make of them as one may wish. In the present society, they are like virgin forests that one may stumble upon while walking. No matter how pristine and unfettered such may appear, in our contemporary social system that forest is inevitably someone's private property and is thus absolutely resistant to any other appropriation."

<snip>

Thanks for your excellent work and this thread, autorank.:thumbsup:

[autorank]

50. Excellent words Uncle Joe. Thanks

This should be required reading: "By separating the people from their naturally, most powerful advocate; true representative government, via demonizing "big government" in public, the corporate oligarchs and their propaganda megaphones can more readily sneak in to the back door with the weakened, prostituted entity in private and control it's actions in such sordid detail as not be suitable for family viewing."

Damn! That's their inside game and it's been a winner every time. This is worth reading several times.

Now the oligarchs are demanding charity, our obligation for their debt. Their judgment is simply not working this time. They're exposed and they have no allies. Nobody wants to be them anymore. CNBC and other outlets are defunct. Who would believe them?

Bad news for the big boys. The worst toxins aren't the assets, they're the asset managers.

Thanks for this excellent response.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jim Sagle]

20. Louis McFadden was a worthless bag of Jew-hating, Hitler-loving slime.

Google

"louis mcfadden" "the jews"

for abundant and crushing proof.

Shame on you for trying to rehabilitate such a filthy monster.

[seemslikeadream]

21. I am very sorry I didn't know, thanks for telling me

I saw his name at Huffington Post

[LeftishBrit]

24. The enemy of our enemy isn't our friend

As parts of the speeches indicate (the attacks on Roosevelt as a 'dictator'; the fanaticism about the gold standard), McFadden was a far-right Republican. In fact, worse than a far-right Republican. He openly supported Hitler. The reference to bankers 'who came here from Europe' and 'abused (American) hospitality' is thus likely to be a code-phrase for Jewish refugees.

If he were around now, he would doubtless be one of the leaders of far-right opposition to the 'socialist Muslim' Obama.

We need to be very careful to avoid making alliances with extreme right-wingers and their supporters, even if they share some of the same enemies.

[leftstreet]

17. K&R

[anaxarchos]

18. Hey, auto...

I'm glad you are continuing the work of tracing the impacts of our old friend, Volker. The fucker may well turn out to be the anonymous "forefather" of the second half of American history.

[autorank]

25. Anax

Volker is that "forefather" - and we're not talking about Paul.

You'll recognize these words, since you wrote them:

"In 1911, 52 year old William Volker married. Returning from his honeymoon, he announced he had put one million dollars in his wife's name and, he said, intended to give the rest of his enormous fortune away. Over the next 36 years, he donated millions of dollars, much of it anonymously. When Volker died at age 88 on November 4, 1947, many schools, parks, and public spaces were named for the furnishings tycoon.

"So why pick on this guy?

"The answer is that the overwhelming priority of Volker's "philanthropy" was focused, not on public spaces but on reactionary ideology. Dismayed by the rise of Socialism in America and doubly dismayed by what he saw as the evolution of government and political thinking towards accommodation and a "new liberalism", eventually personified by the widespread adoption of the economic views of John Maynard Keynes and the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Volker set out to create a new and much more reactionary "mainstream" ideology based loosely around his own ideas of "laissez-faire" capitalism (i.e. a largely unregulated economy) and social Darwinism (the pseudo-scientific notion that in society, unhindered competition would allow the 'cream to rise to the top')."

Mr. Anonymous & The Libertarian Movement, Dec. 22, 2008, Article: anaxarchos

[truedelphi]

23. K & R. Appropriate that this is up on our National Tax Day

As someone who, like other Californians, pays some $ 60 a month just for the fact that the Feds and the State of CA allowed the Enronization of the local utilities here in California, I can only imagine the extreme and dire situation we will face from the Enronization of the financial system.

It continues unabated. Some say 2.9 trillion has been funneled into the banks and financial institutions, some say it is 8 trillion, some say it is now 12 trillion.

Bernanke explained on "Sixty Minutes" that it will not affect the taxpayers -a fter all, all this money transfer involves is his creating "accounts" for the needy institution like he would normally do.

Anyway, Great Top notch article, Autorank. It is one I have been waiting for.

[autorank]

37. "it will not affect tax payers" Bernake

Oh sure. How about the opportunity cost of fully funding health care for all citizens? That's easy if
we just hand money over to health care. How a bout fixing our environmental problems in five years?
That's not as easy but doable if we have a coordinates effort to fix things.

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Hi Mike. Did you read the post the other day showing one guy's warning to

those approving the deregulation initiated by Gramm under the aegis of Reagan. He said it can only lead to a massive bail-out by the tax-payer. And the culprits have still been denying that anyone could have seen it coming! Liars like their father, head stoker in the inferno called hell.

[autorank]

35. Liars, liars loans

Ola Joe, link us up with that one. Sounds like a kidker!

:hi:

[Joe Chi Minh]

65. Hi, Mike. Couldn't find it, but it was Dorgan and he's just been on Rachel Maddow's show, I believe,

[truedelphi]

62. Are you meaning Sen Dorgan? One of the eight

Senators who refused to vote for the de-regulation and overthrow of Glass Steagall.

[Joe Chi Minh]

64. Yes. That's the one. I haven't been ablet o find the thread, but I believe

Dorgan has just been on Rachel Maddow's show. Sorry, I couldn't find it, Mike. Not with the specific reference to a giant bail-out. But that's the guy, alright. Thanks for that Truedelphi.

[truedelphi]

68. It's posted back two weeks or so in political videos here on DU.

If that helps any.

[Hubert Flottz]

28. K&R

GOP = Ginormous Oligarchical Ponzi

EDIT...The Tea Baggers, Don't support the troops anymore, because tax money is what keeps the military supplied with everything they need to survive in the field. Do the wealthy expect the working class American to pay for the neocon's elective war in Iraq too, on top of paying to bail out Wall Street?

[autorank]

38. Oligarchs, Plutocrats, Plunge Team Members

All of the above. It's time for a fair deal, rules that are obeyed, and some real productivity
and creativity equal to the talent in this country, which we all know is considerable.

:hi:

[formercia]

29. "amend the Commodity Exchange Act to promote legal certainty."

What was illegal is now legal. Anyone questioning the motive is told "It's the law of the land." Any lawsuit would be thrown out of court. You can't sue anyone for abiding the Law, can you?

Hey, isn't conspiracy against the law?

[autorank]

34. One man's conspiracy is anothers "law and order"

That's the way The Money Party plays the game.

We control the elections.
We control Congress.
We control the Executive and Judiciary
Don't adjust your sets.
Just sit there and take it.

Well,I'll go out on a limb her and argue that "Thank you sir, may I have another" is
NOT an American tradition.

The Irish resisted for 800 years. We can hang in there a while longer to get a level playing
field with some rules that we all think are fair.

[H2O Man]

30. Powerful.

Thank you for posting this. I'm sending the link to a number of family & friends.

Nominated.

[autorank]

36. Thank you!!!

Somebody told me that going negative will risk a backlash, etc. etc. and we'll end up like Weimar
Germany. My response was, what's the difference?

The sad thing is that this isn't even an opinion piece. It's just the facts.

Regards to your family and friends :thumbsup:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

31. "This was no 'boating' accident!"

Always seems to sum it up for me. Thanks as always for another enlightening post.

[autorank]

33. Ii love that saying!!!

It really sums it up doesn't it!

But that's probably because I'm a 'coincidenc theorist';)

[omega minimo]

39. Thank you Autorank.

[autorank]

43. Thank you Omega Minimo

I'm always enlightened when I see your posts.:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[autorank]

40. k

:kick:

[DemReadingDU]

41. There's so much corruption going on

It's hard to keep up with it all. Eventually, the banksters will crash the markets taking as much loot as they can beforehand, leaving the rest of us holding empty bags and facing a global depression.

I've been looking thru some of your other Money Party articles
http://www.electionfraudnews.com/MichaelCollins.htm

:hi:

[autorank]

42. The discriminating reader.

You're probably onto their game plan. It's all about transfer of wealth, on a huge scale,
from US to THEM. The word is out. The public knows what's happening and there will be a
pay day for the organizers and implementers of the transfer, I'm sure.

[DemReadingDU]

55. The game plan

I figured out the banksters game, but where does Obama fit in? He has installed the same economic crooksters advising him to 'fix' the financial mess as who originally created the financial mess. Just about every day, either Obama or someone from his team, gives a speech telling us not to worry, recovery is just around the corner, the stock market will bounce back. But more corporations are shutting down, unemployment is rising, many people are jobless, homeless, soon to be pennyless and hungry. There is way too much global debt and toxic investments for any kind of recovery. I'm hoping Obama has a plan 'B' that will help all of us cope thru a global depression.

[Me.]

45. What A Nice Surprise

K & R

[autorank]

48. Your sunny disipostition is much appreciated

:hi:

[Me.]

49. And So Is Your Appearance

:evilgrin:

[OwnedByFerrets]

46. To me, the craziest thing is that Credit Default Swaps are still

legal and even defended by wall street.

[autorank]

51. Isn't it strange

There should be an outcry. Instead, CDS are still used as some measure of a likely default.

Here's what one distinguished Wall Streeter said:

Scholes Advises ‘Blow Up’ Over-the-Counter Contracts (Update2)
Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Christine Harper

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Myron Scholes, the Nobel prize- winning economist who helped invent a model for pricing options, said regulators need to "blow up or burn" over-the-counter derivative trading markets to help solve the financial crisis.

The markets have stopped functioning and are failing to provide pricing signals, Scholes, 67, said today at a panel discussion at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Participants need a way to exit transactions and get a "fresh start," he said.

The "solution is really to blow up or burn the OTC market, the CDSs and swaps and structured products, and let us start over," he said, referring to credit-default swaps and other complex securities that are traded off exchanges. "One way to do that, through the auspices of regulators or the banking commissioners, is to try to close all contracts at mid-market prices."

Didn't hear much about this one did we? Your point is well taken.

[lonestarnot]

53. And not even being talked about as dastardly as torture.

[autorank]

67. And that's the whole point!

(How about that Texas Leg taking away Perry's office budget...times are going to change)

[truedelphi]

54. giving another kick to keep it discussed. n/t

[TBF]

56. Thanks for posting this, auto, should be required reading. K&R nt

[autorank]

61. I'm all for that "required reading"

:hi:

[maryf]

57. keeping this alive...

Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

[autorank]

60. Kicking is always an effective strategy THNX

[maryf]

63. HHmmm, if one kick is good...here's another!

Ya never know who mighta been away for a bit and can pick up some wisdom...

[autorank]

71. Ola!

:hi:

[mod mom]

58. Hey Auto, Here is a great discussion that was on NPR's Fresh Air

VERY INTERESTING....SAYS THERE IS A SHOWDOWN W THE BANKING ELITE ARE TAKING ON OBAMA. :hi:


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103122382

Fighting America's 'Financial Oligarchy

Fresh Air from WHYY, April 15, 2009 · Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson has advised many countries in financial crisis. When it comes to America's current economic woes, Johnson says that U.S. suffers from "financial oligarchies" — government officials and elite members of the financial sector that run the country like a profit-seeking company.

In his article "The Quiet Coup" in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Johnson explains that the close connections between government officials and financial leaders are a major part of the U.S.'s economic problems:

"We face at least two major, interrelated problems," Johnson writes. "The first is a desperately ill banking sector that threatens to choke off any incipient recovery that the fiscal stimulus might generate. The second is a political balance of power that gives the financial sector a veto over public policy, even as that sector loses popular support."

Johnson insists the U.S. must temporarily nationalize banks so the government can "wipe out bank shareholders, replace failed management, clean up the balance sheets, and then sell the banks back to the private sector." But, Johnson adds, the U.S. government is unlikely to take these steps while the financial oligarchy is still in place.

Unless the U.S. breaks up its financial oligarchy, Johnson warns that America could face a crisis that "could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression — because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big."

[autorank]

59. Great to see you

Thanks so much for citing that. It's an important article and contribution. The responses on this
thread have been very informative, positive.

This is it: "The second is a political balance of power that gives the financial sector a veto over public policy, even as that sector loses popular support." Where is this veto power coming from?
They have popular hatred now. Very limited and shortsighted people. If they're so reckless and
maladroit as to be pushy now, an incredibly unwise and arrogant position, then how can they fix the
mess they caused. They probably think it's our fault.

I hope Obama slams these guys. If he drops the hammer, they are finito. I would find that
a turning point in our history, a move of major proportions.

:hi:

[autorank]

66. k&

r
:kick:

[puebloknot]

69. Kick to keep it available. Those who forget the past ....

[autorank]

70. My dream catching friend

Our loss is your gain. I see Richardson is happy in NM.

He can stay there, you'll have a an excellent governor, and the next time some crazed "leader"
is barking at the moon threatening to blow up the world, they'll just call on him as the
world very best pinch hitter ever;) He could have talked the Goths down.

Yep, histoir, story in French. It's a clear story, an immorality play in the darkness.

[puebloknot]

72. "...an immorality play in the darkness." From which, I often fear ...

... not even a clear light as strong as we enjoy here in New Mexico will serve to illuminate.

Richardson is playing in a Holodeck in New Mexico which has given him excellent practice in "talking the Goths down." I saw an article in the local newspaper here, years ago, in which a Jewish man said he was going to take a vacation to Israel, to get away from the social tensions and the fighting between ethnic groups that goes on here. "Land of Enchantment," land of long memory: "Your ancestors did xyz to my ancestors, and I'm going to take it out on you in any sniggling way I can." At least we don't have roadside bombings. Just homicide via driving while intoxicated.

Dreams are our best hope, you know!

[autorank]

73. Thank you! n/t