I, too saw “Inside Job”, which was an excellent documentary that pointed out just
how broken our system is.  One must also bear in mind, however, that the whole
situation really got started under the Clinton Administration, when the Glass-
Steagall ruling, which prevented the banks from engaging in the kind of runaway
actions and behaviors that they’ve been engaging in, was repealed by (former)
President Bill Clinton.  Thank you very much, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and
Barack Obama.

This sentence may need review:

“Mishkin was not alone in this submoral activity, but he is the one who goes all
snarky about it on camera—regretting his agreement to do the interview in the
first place, then bringing it to an angry and abrupt end.”

I saw the film weeks ago and don’t remember everything, but I’m 99% sure that
Mishkin does not bring the interview to an abrupt end. I also don’t recall him
getting snarky (only 90% sure on that) but I do remember him regretting it
(95%)....I’m pretty sure the angry interview was another Columbia fellow (though
even he doesn’t exactly cut it off…just says “you’ve got five minutes.”) Anyway, you
might want to have some one check on those things, as I don’t have a copy to
review.

Last night, I saw the Charles Ferguson documentary, Inside Job, and I recommend it to everyone. No, most of us don’t understand every aspect of the crisis and collapse, but with every article I read, every additional book I read, with every interview I watch, and every documentary that open in the theaters, I understand more and more as time passes. As I watched the film, people in the audience, here in NYC, actually gasped at the arrogance of the men involved. Don’t misunderstand, we all know they committed fraud on a massive level—William Black describes it so well:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04232010/profile.htmland

We all know they are arrogant, but the level of arrogance is beyond description. And, Ferguson connects the dots between politics, the financial industry and academia. He leaves NO stone unturned, and does NOT give Obama and his administration a pass.

Another documentary I highly recommend is American Casino, directed by Leslie Cockburn—like Inside Job, American Casino leaves nothing to the imagination. The human toll of the economic crisis is devastating. People left the Film Forum with tears in their eyes.

G. Anderson:

I don’t need to challenge him to a debate, though I certainly would on this singular point.  Here is the tracking from OpenSecrets, perhaps the most accurate of all such sites:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638

As well, one article on Obama vis-a-vis AIG shows that AIG only gave a total of ~$650,000 to BOTH candidates (Obama, McCain):

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7110145&page=1

Another report, by an anti-Obama writer, speaks about a “$101,000” “bonus”:

http://www.examiner.com/right-side-politics-in-national/obama-received-a-101-332-bonus-from-aig

I could not find a single attribution - either tracking or media - that suggests that AIG was even a “major” donor to Obama’s campaign.

So anytime Marrs wants to speak with me, I’m available.

Peace.

No Maani, your wrong as usual, as Jim Mars points out in The Trillion Dollar
Conspiracy p.94. AIG was Mr. Obama’s largest campaign contributor. Mr. Marrs in an
excellent researcher, and his book is on the NY Times best seller list. I suggest you
read it. Maybe you should challenge him to a debate?

G. Anderson:

You say that AIG was Obama’s biggest contributor.  Not so.  In fact, they didn’t even rank in the top 20.  As M. Cavlan points out, Obama’s second biggest contributor was Goldman Sachs.  (His first was UCal.)

What’s more, Obama had the most contributions $200 and under (vis-a-vis $2000 and over) of any presidential candidate.  He raised over $246M from the former, and $136M from the latter.  Compare this with Hillary, who got $52M from the former and $96M from the latter, and Romney who got $8M from the former and $33M from the latter.  (McCain and Edwards did about the same from both.)

As well, Obama ranked highest for “full disclosure” of funds: over 90% - well higher than Clinton, McCain, Romney, Edwards, et al.

Also, either you are not a very good researcher, or you are a disinformation specialist.

Soros funded both parties in 2008.  In fact, most media outlets (including Fox!) had articles noting that Soros was “buying” the election - for the GOP.

Unltimately, the financial system of this country has been “wrong” (and ripe for corruption) since the creation of the Fed in 1913.  And the entire global system has been similarly “wrong” since the creation of the IMF, World Bank, etc. at Bretton Woods in 1944.

Deregulation (economic and other) and, especially, lack of campaign finance reform have allowed both major parties to become wholly owned subsidiaries of the transnational corporations and lobbyists.  Once this occurred, we became a plutocracy (or perhaps a kleptocracy and oligarchy), under a form of benevolent dictatorship.  (Though we seem to be moving closer and closer to proto-totalitarianism.)

As I noted in the Greenwald thread, this country has become a Third World First World country, and there are no signs that it will get better - only signs that is is getting, and will continue to get, worse.

Peace.

The bottom line of the neo con is that they have ripped out the heart of government.
Through corruption, outright bribery, fraud, and deregulation. And by going back and
forth between jobs in government, I.e politics and the industry they are supposed to
regulate.

Then they turn around and say look it’s a failure, we told you so. When in fact it was
the neo cons who created that failure to grease the wheels of their sleaze.

Do Democrats do this too sure they do.

No government is not the problem. Corporate control of government is. That’s what a
plutocracy is all about.

Of course their opposed to regulation they prefer to do their dirty deeds cheaply
without an Elizabeth Warren watching. And of course once again the will turn around
and blame   The victims of their larceny. 

We didn’t get here by accident, because of the failure of the SEC, we got here
because the plutocracy made it fail. So they could screw the people and get rich in the
process.

DEBATE OVERBOARD!

calltoaccount: That might not be the intention at the very top, but the scoreboard still reads: Wall Street 10, Public minus 10 plus interest, payable forever.

Well-written and well impassioned diatribe, but just another in a long list of the now famous American habit of “bitching-in-a-blog”. Which prompts the proverbial, “But, so what? What’s done is done. How should it be prevented in the future?”

Besides, “forever” is a long time ... and the money spent bailing out Wall Street is coming back to the Treasury, with interest. It did not go down some Black Hole. Ditto the money spent bailing out BigAuto.

Yes, some people made a LOT of money and, yes, no one has seen any clawed back. That IS a great mystery since the fraud seems patent to most of the American public. But,  it is not that easy to prove in a court of law – which requires a stricter measure of proof than an umpire on a sports field.

In fact, in the most recent trail in the matter, regarding insider-trading, the defendants were found not guilty. So, maybe the Justice Department is taking its time in putting a case together. The time limit of jurisdiction in the matter is very long ….

Shall we get a handle on ourselves? The debate is going overboard. This is 2010 not the 12th century and the matter is no religious Inquisition. The burden of proof is altogether different.

cta: A seminal element of the enormous problems we face today is little known or understood by the general public and most investors: the government’s abject failure, via the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency charged with protecting investors and the integrity of the markets, to enforce the most basic, rudimentary business axiom: that when a buyer pays, the seller must deliver that which was sold

Yes, the above is a well known mechanism employed by the SEC, but it is not “seminal” in the SubPrime Mess as it provoked the Credit Seizure of 2008—from which we have yet to fully recover. The mechanism is just another brick in the Wall Street usage of financial markets to make profit.

I maintain that only profound changes in both income and capital gains taxes, which are raised significantly, can change the fundamental motivation for the unethical corruption that has taken place – not just in Finance, but across the board in Corporate America. We have one of the most lax legal-systems, as regards Market Oversight, of any modern nation.

Because the agencies in charge were neutered by the Lead-head Administration and its cronies. The regulatory rules were there, but the referees were asked to look the other way.

Besides, we, the people, elected those who did this. We are about to elect them into a majority position once again in November.

Do you all realize this ... ?

It’s not all that difficult to understand.  It’s called criminal fraud.

Shickel says: “...and I still don’t fully understand our endless financial crisis.” 
Unfortunately, he is not alone. 

For him and anyone else who’d like to understand fully, please see:

http://calltoaccount.wordpress.com/

... which lays out the roots of the financial crisis and its coverup in no uncertain
terms.

“I think the answer to the meltdown lies in this: all these fucking banksters
realized they could get rich—not by diligently performing their obligations to
stockholders and clients—but by merely passing around pieces of fraudulent
paper and collecting a fee each time the paper passed from hand to hand…and
then paying themselves huge bonuses (and getting away with it) even if their
companies lost money or failed.”

It’s called the Federal Reserve System and Fractional Reserve Banking.  That’s
the chum, Wall. St. the sharks, and the rest of us the fish.

Dump the Fed, Set rules for Wall St. and jail their asses when they break them,
and otherwise let the market and individual choice do its thing to produce
things people need/want.  Their is nothing Non-Libertarian or non-Austrian
about ground rules within which to let individuals drive the economy through
their own informed self interest.  What’s Non-LIbertarian/Austrian is having a
Fed, and using the government to achieve Keynsian demand targets, instead of
letting individuals make their own choices. What’s so scary about that?

What we have today is scary.

I think the answer to the meltdown lies in this: all these fucking banksters realized they could get rich—not by diligently performing their obligations to stockholders and clients—but by merely passing around pieces of fraudulent paper and collecting a fee each time the paper passed from hand to hand…and then paying themselves huge bonuses (and getting away with it) even if their companies lost money or failed.

No one was watching, the regulators are either part of the system or bought off, and the politicians don’t understand what’s happening (and don’t care, particularly if they are getting money themselves).  And even now, in the face of obvious fraud, bringing these banksters to justice is difficult.

I am surprised that more homeless and bankrupt people haven’t burnt down Wall Street and Washington.

I thought all of you knew.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows - Thanx Leonard Cohen

It would be more fruitful if we focused our energy on how to live in the face of disaster.  Don’t we all know things are not going to end well?  We are part of an unsustainable system.  An economic system that depends on ongoing growth, while we live on a finite planet. Game, set, and match. You can’t deny it any longer.

More of the same condescension’s and rationalizations…

Blaming the victim yet again, despite all the facts…

No all are not culpable…

No those shut out of the financial system, did not create the phony paper, did not falsify names, and work histories, income… did not create liar loans with fictitious information…

They were created out of thin air by thieves in the financial industry..

They did not buy congress, or the Senate.

Crime is not a game, no matter how ill your thinking is… there are victims to that crime…

Millions who lost, their retirement, and their homes…

Hard working people who have lost everything because their entire neighborhoods went belly up….Millions who did absoulutely nothing wrong…

Your belief that all are guilty is a delusion….
It is a way of covering your own sins, and rationalizing your own behavior.

What is there to understand? The Government, that YOU elected, is not in control of the Country and, to be perfectly honest, never has been.
Your elected representatives, on the whole, are in the pockets of the Financial Institutions.
Big Business and Bigger Money has and always will be in control until you electors grow some backbone, get together and change it.

NEVER THE TWAIN SHOULD MEET

GW: It was, in fact, easily predictable by any observer who knew and understood the rules of the game, and was also in a position to observe how many participants were attempting to “game” the rules.

I find this remark specious and maintain that everybody was gaming the system—which is how bubbles are born, grow and finally burst.

The cupidity was widespread, starting from the poor jerk who assumed stupidly a predatory loan, to the investment banker who packaged the loans into Toxic Waste and sold them to the world, to the Top Management that was cashing in their performance bonuses knowing full well how illicitly they had been earned.

The only open question is how to apportion the blame. The poor jerk trusted people who were untrustworthy. The financiers knew full well what they were doing—and that it was dishonest—but could not have cared less. They were grabbing for the Golden Ring on the Merry-Go-Round of finance. To my mind, they are the real miscreants in this sad story.

There are three people in leadership positions, who had eventual responsibility for the Mess. The first in line was the Ayn Randian Greenspan mouthing idiocies about how “markets regulate themselves”. The second and third are Billy-boy Clinton and Robert Rubin who—with the connivance of a Republican Congress—brought about the demise of the Glass-Steagal Act.

This permitted the marriage of two incompatible instruments—Commercial Banking that is risk-averse (or should be) and Investment Banking that is risk-prone (and always will be). And never the twain should meet.

We think we have solved the problem by imposing higher Reserve Requirements (a portion of a bank’s total assets held in reserve to offset its risk obligations). Some people, me included, think that this is insufficient and all Risk Operations (particularly derivatives sales) should be hived off into completely separate and independent entities. (As they were done subsequent to passage of the Glass-Steagal Act in 1931.)

Some banks have seen (belatedly) that wisdom and effected precisely that solution.

Michael Cavian, RN: I remember you from Common Dreams. On that Sunday, some of us were having a very serious conversation amongst ourselves, and when I went back to respond, again, your posts had been removed, as were mine, and others, too. In addition, on that same Sunday, my posts were removed from other threads on other issues. However, I wasn’t banned.

Good to read that you’re still agitating—are you in Minnesota? I’m trying to remember.

MENTAL MASTURBATION

Who has received the most campaign cash from Goldman Sachs and the most support from George Soros?

Money is one of the rules of the game in politics. It is useless, perfectly useless, to bitch-in-a-blog about how the game is played.

Republicans, Democrats, NeoCons, Bleeding Hearts—all just name tags. The objective of the game is Power.

If you don’t like the rules, militate to change them. A democracy allows you to change the rules.

We are otherwise just participating in a bit of Relief Catharsis on the Internet. A sort of mental masturbation.

So, take the Big Step—engage yourself, make a commitment. Put yourself on-the-line in stead of in-the-cloud.

Then, and only then, has one a bona fide reason to complain.

But I thought you Americans liked greed, admired it even. All that talk about us European faggots not knowing what the F**** going on! Nothing like the good old American double standard; what? Ah well, you can blame us Europeans we don’t mind. And anyway, without us who the hell would play the bad guy in your soppy movies?

A book that is worth the read is the “The Big Short, Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis, an insightful book relating to crucial questions about the 2008 Stock Market Crash:

The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower and middle class Americans who can’t pay their debts.

Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? 

Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? 

Yes Mr. Goldman I agree with the following:

“The most recent debacle in the global economy was predictable, but not necessarily because one understood economic theory. It was, in fact, easily predictable by any observer who knew and understood the rules of the game, and was also in a position to observe how many participants were attempting to “game” the rules. The system was brought down by a general culture of corruption and fraud, including the bribing of elected officials, and an entrenched system designed and employed by powerful people to efficiently corrupt the morals of subordinates who work for them. Corruption, fraud, deceit and general dishonesty is and was the state of consciousness prevalent in that culture. That’s what brought the economy to its knees… at least it looks that way to me, given my state of consciousness.”

unfortunately, there are those who still believe, the the delusions of the right, even after all that, and who are unable to recognize a psyops when they see one…

and even more unfortunately, this financial debacle is only just beginnning, and puts our whole country in jeopardy…

http://www.gpln.com/reflecting_on_soros.htm

No, you are are wrong, and your delusions are easily seen by everyone. Your idols are made of clay, and worse, their crooks of the worst kind.

They sold out their country for a few pieces of gold, then turned around and tried to foist the blame on the very same people.

They created liar loans by the hundreds of thousand, fed to phony, paper mills, and reaped billions in the process.

Paper that was fictional.

The American people were turned into debt slaves, and clever rationaliztions, on your part won’t change a thing.

The American people then were signed up to bail out the banks for trillions or dollars of tax payer money…

How many of gone to jail for this.. none

Continue to worship crooks, and do their intellectual bidding..

This is something their good at and always do, blame the victim… your good at it too. But it doesn’t change the facts.

Ferguson for Dummies;

Wall Streeters figured out early on if they could get the mortgasge companies to issue mortgages to just about anyone, they could then bundle the morgages ,get the rating agncies to say they were AAA rated (even if they were garbage) and then sell them as if they were gold.

Wall Streeters were alchemists—they turned junk into gold. They did this spledidly—they worked frantically to get as many mortages in the door as possible.

Long story short: more mortgages = more junk to sell as if it were gold =the richer Wall Streeters became .

CUPIDITY

GA: No the American people are not to blame for this. That is more disinformation, spread by the banks, and the politicians they own. The massive fraud and phony paper created by banks ... was created to enrich a few individuals.

Bollocks to this notion. The phenomenon was widespread and a viral propagation of cupidity by a people fixated on making Quick Money. It was a typical Asset Bubble that burst.

You just want to point the finger of blame on those who most made money from it.

One cannot imagine how America’s fixation on money is so pronounced if one lives within the social phenomenon. It becomes almost impossible to tell the forest from the trees.

POST SCRIPTUM: The money trough

It has always existed, but became particularly pronounced when Reagan too office and lowered both marginal income tax and capital gains rates.

It is the rot eating away at the fiber of the nation. Everybody wants their fifteen minutes at the Money Trough.

The banks are practically guaranteed a profit as it
is.  The cause for the crisis was that the smaller
margins they were looking at simply weren’t good
enough, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that
the preferential position could be exploited for
massive gains when leverage is maximized. 

Unfortunately, leverage means risk as much as it
means profitability.  As good as it is going up, it
is just as bad going down. 

So when a mortgage holder stops paying - for whatever
reason! - the banks don’t have the capital to cover
the leverage built in to that debt.  They could take
this $100,000 loan and use it as a downpayment for
some $10,000,000 CDS or equity position (really, some
institutions did go so far as 100x leverage!). 

Now suddenly someone missed a $1,000 mortgage payment
but the solvency of a $10,000,000 CDS is suddenly at
risk.  Most of the originators were quick to pawn
this off as soon as possible, but they did so by
dumping these “assets” quietly in to the other
institutional investors who can’t keep track of every
little thing they own.  So states, pensions, other
banks, and big insurance companies like AIG have
“lots of assets” that only exist because they were
leveraged highly against questionable debts! 

Fact is, we got robbed in a perfectly legal way.  The
worst part of all is that they were stealing fool’s
gold and the government came in to replace that
pyrite with the real thing:  our future tax receipts.

So we’re supposed to pay for the mortgage so they can
keep millions, but no tax or regulation is going to
right that so long as the system only creates money
at the highest levels in a secretive way.  Unless
you’re at the top, you’ve got to work or pay back
interest for any scraps to ever “trickle down.”

No the American people are not to blame for this. That is more dis information, spread
by the banks, and the politicians they own. The massive fraud and phony paper
created by banks in paper mills, was created to enrich a few individuals.  In fact many
of the stooges of those individuals remain at the top of the financial food chain where
they continue to loot and hide fraud from public view.

President Obama’s largest campaign contributor was AIG.

The banks have destroyed this country financially. The have also blocked reform. They
cannot allow their loans to be looked at, hence the moratorium on foreclosures. So
many of those mortgages are complete frauds, that there isn’t any way on God’s green
earth that they can be fixed.

This country is on the verge of a complete financial meltdown, one that cannot be
fixed by more government paper.

The Democratic party and the Republican party are responsible because they let
themselves be bought. They promised to protect this country from all it’s enemies
foreign and domestic. But they failed to do so.

Yes you will try and blame someone, but that’s only because there is no one willing to
take responsibility.  Get a grip, your about to lose everything you’ve ever worked for.

Our political system no longer works.

Lafayette, 10/10 @8.25 - A number of years ago, a
Wells Fargo loan officer, turned whistle blower,
testified before a congressional committee that she
was instructed to only issue sub-primes - even if the
potential mortgagee qualified for a prime, she was
to, if necessary, alter their financial reports to
look as though they didn’t qualify for a prime.

There was a lot of ‘flipping’ and other money-making
schemes going on during this debacle (the vultures
always show up when they smell a fast buck to be
made) but the numbers don’t compare to the innocent
who got taken, big time.

Conservative Republicans were in control of legislation for eight years and allowed credit default swaps to be used to scam the banking system that was FDIC insured.

Both the banking culprits and Conservatives in Congress, mostly Republicans, knew the economy was going to collapse, because they had either flooded or allowed the market to be flooded with toxic financial instruments, that people would invariably be unable to pay.

A credit default swap is an insurance instrument not covered by insurance law, that was/is used to cover the risk of a bet, in this case, the known toxic mortgages that were bundled into financial instruments (securities), the bet was that the government would cover their worthless mortgages; a scam of the government system and all the people that bought into the worthless securities (instruments) scam . 

Credit default swaps are an insurance scam, outside of insurance law, to make money from failure of toxic financial securities (instruments).  A worthless bet is made,  then the credit default swap is made as insurance on the opposite side, to ascertain that the banker making the worthless bet does not lose when the expected loss happens.

There was no such thing as a credit default swap until the necessity became apparent because of the market being flooded with worthless financial mortgage instruments (securities) in the financial scam.  The toxic financial mortgage securities were originated so that bankers would not have to be responsible for their loans, and credit default swaps are insurance that the bankers toxic instruments (securities) will not harm their bank, as harm will only come to the government and the populace at large.

And the people pay for the scam in the name of saving the economy and the banker bandits get away with the scam.

Financial Wall St sharks, doing their natural thing, within a perverted
legal/regulatory system (preventable with clear, enforced,yes enforced, oh yes,
enforced laws. Its called accountability and this culture should try it.)

Government favoritism and manipulation of the market via Freddie and Fannie,
of course influenced by corruption via campaign system, as well as lack of
accountability. (Preventable by getting government out of business of picking
winners and losers, and trying to implement well meaning goals from a statist
perspective; historically always a losing game.)

A private, unelectable, unaccountable Federal Reserve that sets the whole thing
in motion with its “monetary policy” that pumps free money into the system in
the name of Keynsian progress, just begging for malinvestement and the
crashes that follow. (Preventable by eliminating the Fed, having sound money,
and letting the market and we the people (as prescribed in the Constitution)
determine when and where to invest or use moderate debt to achieve economic
ends.

The Fed and Bankers with the use of Fractional Reserve Banking exist only to
continually line their, and their allies pockets with free money- printed out of
thin air, interest to be paid back to them for NO productive work. And where
does it “magically” come from? Its not magic. It’s inflation. The “target inflation
rate”, corresponding to the money printed via the Fed/Treasury, ensures that
the population is continually taxed by that inflation, with the profits going to
the interest-collecting bankers. 

You call the Great Depression, and the current Great Whatever, “stability”? and
economic fairness, or full employment?  Uhhhh, that’s the supposed reason for
the Fed.

1913 certainly a fateful year.  Andrew Jackson and many other dedicated
Americans in our history fought the creation of a private Central Bank, and told
of exactly what it would do, and who the benefactors would be.  Look back at
the debates- it really happened, and today we take the Fed system for granted
as some benevolent necessity to our system?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-466210540567002553#

Ron Paul, and Austrian style economists/libertarians talk about this stuff every
day. Time to listen.

A COLLOSSAL PONZI SCHEME

Most agree that the mortgage ‘game’ was at the heart of the collapse

Most should agree that we, the consumer, were both perpetrators and victims. It was a classic Ponzi Scheme, by which those who got onto the escalator on the ground floor made a bundle provided they had the foresight of getting off the elevator before it propelled itself through the roof. Those who did not, however ...

The venality of the scheme was its propellant. Everybody wanted to make money by “flipping a condo”, banking the profit, then flipping another condo … etc., etc., etc. And because the phenomenon became viral, Main Street realtors and credit brokers looked the other way, rather than apply due-diligence creditworthiness standards.

And the lenders worked their Financial Engineering Magic. They securitized the loans by selling them forward, to take their profits immediately instead of waiting for the interest-bearing returns for decades.

And then there are the Wall Street Golden Boys who innovated Structured Investment Vehicles (having packaged the securitized Toxic Waste), had it stamped as “realty backed investments” with a triple-A rating from their cronies at the Credit Rating Agencies, then selling the Waste to gullible investors around the globe. (As well as creating derivatives, such as the CDS, based upon Toxic Waste, which they also sold to all and sundry.)

This scheme was fraudulent from A to Z. And how many have gone to jail or had their bonuses clawed-back? 

Which is why the US market for financial services has lost almost total credibility beyond the three-mile limit. It is difficult to imagine anyone forgetting such a dysfunctional and reckless financial system for at least a generation. Nonetheless, since history repeats itself, only differently, just as we forgot how the Great Depression of the 1930s was provoked, we shall also forget the Great Recession of 2008.

Leaving us highly prone to provoking yet another …

POST SCRIPTUM

Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

THE GOD OF MAMMON

RS: But still, I’m more than happy to have seen “Inside Job”—if only to watch professor Mishkin prove the intrinsic and almost universal shabbiness of our times.

If that is the case, then Mishkin declaiming here, at The Economist, will absolutely thrill you. One is advised to read the posts below his explanation as well.

Though less evident, Mishkin is wrestling with his conscience as he tries to substantiate his actions … and as an economist turned hired-gun, it is really quite satisfying to see him swing in the wind. More economists, willing to deal with the devil, merit the same outcome.

What we have, all rolled into one, in the SubPrime Mess, a chapter in the Tale of the Great Recession of 2009,  is a lesson in morality. It is about how a venal sociological phenomenon, that occurred on both Wall Street and Main Street, becomes a national economic disaster. That phenomenon was viral because, as the morbid but never rational excuse went, “Everybody was doing it!”

And not just Mishkin. Larry Summers was also cashing in on the Speakers Circuit mouthing his imponderable punditry for very handsome fees.

Such is the Way of the World in a country gone berserk over money, having sold its soul to the God of Mammon. When one has shed oneself of a moral backbone, then it is amazingly easy to bend with whatever prevailing wind.

“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I don’t care who makes the laws.”

-Rothschild

By the way, a CDS, Credit Default Swap is a contract
insuring a bond if the issuer defaults.  (The infamous
AIG was obligated for $500billion in issued CDS (s) and
had 5 times less than that in assets to cover. Not only
that little snag, they may as well have been selling
fire insurance to a guy sitting in his factory while it
was burning down around him.)

Repeating the words of banker, Rothschild, on
‘introducing’ banking methods to America in the mid-
late 19th century.

“The few who can understand the system will be either
so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its
favors, that there will be no opposition from that
class, while, on the other hand, that great body of
people, mentally incapable of comprehending the
tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the
system, will bear its burden without complaint, and,
perhaps without even suspecting that the system is
inimical to their interests.”

What’s amazing is that Rothschild’s description of
the financial services system (racket) applies today,
relatively the same, as it did in his day.  And, read
up on the Crash of ‘29 and a version of its cause is
what caused the economic collapse in ‘08.

Most agree that the mortgage ‘game’ was at the heart
of the collapse.  So, who’s in it:  mortgage brokers,
banks that originally loan the money, the loan
distributors, the hedge funds and institutional
investors that purchase these loans packaged with
higher quality ones.  (And with every turn over,
there’s a lot of money to be made - obviously.)

(A clue to just how profitable dealing in sub-primes
was:  The amount of sub-prime mortgages issued and
embedded in Mortgage Backed Securities shot up from
$56 billion in 2000 to $508 billion at the peak in
2005.)

Can’t understand, what’s going on?

That’s just the point isn’t it… you’re not supposed to understand….

That’s right, you’re not supposed to understand…They’ve made it complicated for just that reason so you don’t get it…

That’s one of the best ways to hide a crime in plain sight, to disguise it as something else… In this case your failure to understand.

It subtly shifts the blame from them to you…

It’s just like our two party system, which really functions as one party system, each side taking turns taking the blame. Deflecting the public’s attention onto cosmetic issues, of race, sex, and ethnicity, you know unsolvable emotional issues…

All the while stealing a country and making it legal. Lying straight faced on national T.V., about what they’ve done and what their going to do, and getting away with it…

You know, scaring people, making them live in fear, be paralyzed with it, breath it daily…..then for a price selling them relief, the security of cheap symbols..

That are nothing more than bauble’s decorating a Christmas tree, only this time it’s your ego.

Fear is free, but relief costs plenty…

I normally don’t give much credence to movies as the ultimate frame of reference to explaining big events and disasters. After all, movies are made based on one or few men perspectives and to entertain and generate money.

However, I like the title of the film as being an “Inside Job” and I might want to see it for that reason. In fact, one can say, aside from natural disasters, that all mishaps, tragic events, wars and financial collapses are the result of “inside jobs” by crooked human beings who stand to benefit from these tragic events. A wise saying puts it this way, “Someone’s calamity is a boom and boon for others.”
Hence the expression of “merchants of death.”

Whether it is military wars, economic wars, or ideological wars, they are all, at the bottom, “inside jobs” perpetrated by worshipers of Mammon and power, who stand to benefit from the misery and chaos resulting from these wars.

Talk about the failures of organized religions to bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the world, but one should be honest enough to recognize that the “worshipers of Mammon” are the most dangerous of all religions, despite not being recognized as a “formal religion.”

Hence, I am totally convinced that the economic collapse of the last two years, like the tragic event of 9/11, were both orchestrated by insiders, and hence they were “inside jobs.”

...and what kind of Keynsian joy was Iceland under the spell of…..
Unnaturally low interest rates? Malinvestment via Debt? Manipulative usurpation
of the debt-based investment system by Wall St. types who own the legislators?

Sound familiar?

Keep bashing the Austrian/Libertarian viewpoint, but it certainly isn’t them who
drive these Malinvestment bubbles, and massive transfers of wealth upon the
inevitable crashes.

http://mises.org/daily/4730
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard66.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6507136891691870450&hl=en#

“All right—I give up. I have now sat through Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job”—the nonfiction version of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”—and I still don’t fully understand our endless financial crisis.”

that’s probably because you’re reading the wrong stuff etc.

a little more research and you may have something