Reich: Follow the Money: Behind Europe’s Debt Crisis Lurks Another Giant Bailout of Wall Street

[highplainsdem]

http://robertreich.org/post/11033625495

-snip-

The Street’s total exposure to the euro zone totals about $2.7 trillion. Its exposure to to France and Germany accounts for nearly half the total.

-snip-

Make no mistake. The United States wants Europe to bail out its deeply indebted nations so they can repay what they owe big European banks. Otherwise, those banks could implode — taking Wall Street with them.

One of the many ironies here is some badly-indebted European nations (Ireland is the best example) went deeply into debt in the first place bailing out their banks from the crisis that began on Wall Street.

-snip-

In other words, Greece isn’t the real problem. Nor is Ireland, Italy, Portugal, or Spain. The real problem is the financial system — centered on Wall Street. And we still haven’t solved it.

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. That'd be interesting to see them try. nt

[Raster]

3. How fucking true. Wall Street and it's various "products" are the digital-age version of ....

three-card monte. The game is rigged and not in favor of the suckers -- all of us.

The entire cesspool called Wall Street, needs to be flushed away like so much shit. And while we're flushing, the Securities and Exchange Commission needs a good cleaning also. For far too long they have cuddled and coddled the Wall Street psychopaths.

[mod mom]

4. Yesterday's Fresh Air had an interview that talked about Wall St betting against European countries

Here is the interview from yesterday, for those interested:

-snip

Bass bought credit default swaps, which are essentially insurance policies on government bonds. What that means is that if a government like Greece becomes unable to pay its own debt, Bass gets paid.

" it was pretty implausible that the governments would not repay their debts," Lewis says. " we're in a situation now where Greece will not repay its debt. He's been proven right. So when he made these bets, he was alone in the marketplace doing this. ... His vision was apocalyptic. ... He would tell you that it starts with Greece, then with Spain and Italy, and he thinks France has unsustainable levels of debt and the markets will turn on the French government. But exactly how it unfold isn't clear."

On Tuesday's Fresh Air, Lewis looks at some of the institutions and individuals involved in the financial crisis in places like Greece, Ireland and Iceland — to determine what went wrong and who was involved in the current debt crisis.

-snip

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/04/140948138/how-the-financial-crisis-created-a-new-third-world

These assholes stand to profit if these governments default. Many like Greece, Ireland and Italy we heard were on shakey ground but he even predicted France! :mad:

[mod mom]

6. RE: OWS from interview w Michael Lewis:

"Wall Street, in recent years, seems to have become an engine of unfairness. And you can see why people are outraged by what's happened there. Just back away from this financial crisis, and the truth is, we're still in it. The story I'm telling in this book is just an extension of the story I told in The Big Short. It hasn't gone away. We haven't put to rest the problems that were created during the subprime bubble. But Wall Street private enterprises — these big Wall Street firms where people were paid more than anyone in the society because they supposedly know what they are doing with money — orchestrates the biggest misallocation of capital, of money in the history of the world. And they pay themselves an awful lot of money while they're doing this. The result of this is this crisis, and the crisis leads to Wall Street being essentially bailed out of its own mistakes — that the government decides that these big Wall Street banks going down is unthinkable. And so, once the Bush and Obama administrations decided that you couldn't let these firms fail and they didn't want the mess of nationalizing them, there was really only one way forward — and that way was to gift money onto these banks until they're back on their feet and can function at the center of the economy again. But that, to any normal person who is outside the system, just looks ridiculously unfair. It looks like socialism for capitalists and capitalism for everybody else. So it's no wonder people are marching in southern Manhattan."

[mmonk]

5. Recommended.

[snagglepuss]

7. to read later

[Javaman]

8. throwing money at wall street to solve the economies problems is

like shoveling shit against the tide.

I used to work in the film industry. there were two types of producers. the good ones: they solved problems with logic, reason and understanding and the bad ones: who threw money at everything thinking it would make the problems go away. They didn't.

what would happen is, the people whom they threw the money at to solve the problems would only come back for more later.

and here we are.

[mod mom]

9. exactly!

[abelenkpe]

13. The problem solvers

are always more fun to work for. They plan ahead, don't panic and actually know what they want too. So much easier to work for! ;)

[mod mom]

10. k&r

[abelenkpe]

11. doh!

Sorry didn't see you had already posted this. It's a great article! don't know when our government is gong to wake up and actually reform the system....good to see it getting more attention.

[me b zola]

12. K&R

[truedelphi]

14. The Paulson/Bernanke/Geithner trio has already seen to it that

The Biggest Financial Firms in Europe got money from the US Bailouts.

And also over the years, Ben Nernanke has broken the law.

When Senator Bunning pointed this out, back in 2009, he was ignored by most of his colleagues.

But his words indicate that there are legal methods which could allow for the removal of the Bernanke:

Sen Bunning: "As recently as two weeks ago, as indicated in a letter that you sent me, you (on edit: meaning Bernanke) still refuse to admit that the Fed Actions played any role in inflating the housing bubble despite overwhelming evidence and the consensus of economists to the contrary. And in your efforts to keep filling the punch bowl, you cranked up the printing press to buy mortgage securities, commercial paper and other assets from Wall Street.

"Those purchases by the way led to some nice profits for the Wall Street banks and dealers who sold them to you, and the GSE purchases seem to be illegal since the Federal Reserve Act only allows the purchase of securities backed by the government."

Now Bernanke stands and denounces the GOP - but far more than any member of the GOP, he, Greenspan, Paulson and Geithner have put the manipulations of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve into great offerings of the wealth of our nation.

At least Nine Trillions of dollars.