In September of ’08, Americans were told that we were in an economic crisis. We were also told that the only way to weather this economic crisis was to bail out the financial institutions that were likely to fail as a result. Then Treasury Secretary, Henry Merritt Paulson, who proposed the bailout, stated that this crisis was a result of “bad lending” and “bad borrowing” among other things.  I didn’t believe them at all. I had no proof of course, but they sure were in a hurry to pass the legislation, and they do not hurry for anything humanitarian, so it couldn’t be of any help to “We the People”. I also thought Bush looked quite guilty, like the money was already in his pocket and he was ready to run at any moment.

See if you can catch him trying to conceal his glee at 8:47 to 8:49, and watch his right eye at 9:20 to 9:22 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4039014977037664357&ei=tJ8DSvedFY_UrQKt8JGECQ&q=Bush+on+bailout&hl=en&emb=1.

 There were a lot of people scared on command by what they were hearing. There were plenty of mouth pieces (mostly stockholders I imagine) agreeing with the Paulson plan. Another thought I remember having, as it was all happening, was if they were predicting economic catastrophe, where were these predictive abilities leading up to that point. Little did I know at the time, but Paulson did have the ability to predict this long before it happened. Can you guess why he didn’t say anything?

Henry Paulson completed his masters at Harvard Business in 1970 and then entered the Nixon administration as a Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense. In 1972, he worked as Office Assistant to John Ehrlichman, who resigned in 1973 prior to his conviction in 1975, for his involvement in the Watergate Scandal. Avoiding the Watergate fallout himself, in 1974, Paulson went to work for Goldman Sachs in Illinois. Rising (or lowering) through the ranks, in 1982 he became a partner, then in 1990, the Co-Head of Investment Banking. By 1994, he was their Chief Operating Officer until 1998, when he forced out Jon Corzine, only to take over as Goldman Sachs new CEO.  Paulson was early to realize much more profits would come as a result of betting with their own capital, rather than being the go between for others and carried on as such. Goldman Sachs, under the guidance of Paulson, was as active in sub-prime lending as their competitors until the summer of ’06. It was on May 30, 2006 that President Bush announced Paulson as his pick for Treasury Secretary and the Goldman Sachs gravy train kept going after he left.

Our government has had a long history of bringing in people from Goldman Sachs, especially into the Treasury Department. Goldman Sachs seems to be the one consistency through changing administrations. The Goldman Sachs infiltration of our government could be another article in itself and in fact some have already done this in these two articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0820-06.htm

 A very important thing to remember is that we didn’t vote for these people. They were appointed, and find their way in, regardless of the administration. Can you figure out how and why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcI3aAMnwPk&feature=PlayList&p=EAB54F473B0585F7&index=1&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL (Paulson justifying bailing out of financial institutions)

When the bailout was proposed then rushed in during the last few months of the Bush Administration, Paulson told Bush he had no prior knowledge of the financial crisis. Paulson was also in close contact with Goldman Sachs employees in the Treasury, along with the Goldman Sachs alumni he turned to for managing the bailout. Interestingly enough, the group at Goldman Sachs had enough prior knowledge of the predicament to make $3 billion by short selling sub-prime debt. Short selling is when someone sells a financial instrument they do not have, at current market value, and then purchases it when the price drops. This works great if you anticipate a drop in the value of a financial instrument. Goldman Sachs did, in fact, anticipate such a drop in the value of sub-prime mortgages. Being the prudent financial institution, they set themselves up to get their $3 billion payday, thus benefiting from the collapse of sub-prime values that led to the housing crisis. Goldman Sachs knew enough to prepare for the inevitable catastrophe, even profiting from it. Paulson has an estimated net-worth of over $700 million, and he was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. He knows his finances just like his buddies at Goldman Sachs. It may be possible that working for the government stupefies people, but he had only been the Treasury Secretary about 1 ½ years. Did he really lose that much intelligence? If so, when Paulson called his buddies from Goldman Sachs, could they even stand his company with him being a dummy? Or was this the plan the whole time?

While Paulson was treasury secretary he saw to the end of 3 Goldman Sachs rivals. He arranged the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase, allowed Lehman Brothers to crumble while bullying Bank of America into absorbing Merrill Lynch. Also in the months leading up to the bailout Paulson proposed using $70 billion to fix Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac’s insolvency, which is the inability to pay one’s debt (the vocabulary is always nicer when you are rich). After that proposal failed, Paulson arranged for the takeover of the companies at a cost of $200 billion (it would have been cheaper to let him run amuck the way he wanted the first time) while making the U.S. liable for hundreds of billions more in bad debt. He also organized the federal purchase of AIG for $85 billion.

Neel Kashkari, another Goldman Sachs alumni, was handed the reins of the bailout by Paulson after they scored $700 billion (Paulson and Bush break through defensive Congress then pass it too Kashkari for a touchdown. The crowd goes wild!! Actually, the crowd was clueless. They were busy working to pay off the debt).  An article in the Wall Street Journal reported a tape, available on YouTube, of the Treasury Department in a conference call telling around 800 Wall Street leaders that the stipulations being put on the bailout would not be enforceable. This was long before any feigned surprise from Capitol Hill on the issue of golden parachutes and bonuses. It seems that after the report from the Wall Street Journal, the YouTube video had been removed.

The Young Turks talk about the WSJ report…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QauoTWE5XzM&feature=PlayList&p=096A14F873322E6D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=37)  

In doing this research, I found another article that mentioned the YouTube video being removed, but offered a link to another poorer quality of the video…

 http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/10/tape-blows-cover-on-true-treasury.html

 This was a great article on the subject but when I clicked on the link, it went to a YouTube page that said “this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association” or SIFMA. You can at least see this on YouTube by clicking the link that says “Part 3” in the previous link. I wonder how they obtained the copyright to any information on our public officials. I bet there are quite a few citizens in prison who wish they could buy up the rights to their incriminating evidence.

I’m just your average under-informed citizen. If only I could see the light Bush and Paulson could see, I would know they were acting in our best interests and the rush on passing the legislation was the only thing that could be done. Wait, who is that I hear in the background? Why it must be former BB&T CEO, John Allison. BB&T was one of the banks to make a profit while other banks where collapsing.  Mr. Allison recommended purchasing foreclosed homes, rather than securities backed by foreclosed mortgages. That would have meant a purchase of assets, or reality, rather than a purchase of debt, or illusion.  Mr. Allison says the primary beneficiaries are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He also goes on to state that the Treasury Department is dominated by Wall Street investment bankers and that the discussion is being shaped by the same institutions that made the poor decisions in the first place. He also believes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the most responsible for this crisis. Well, maybe I’m not too far off then.  See everything he had to say here:

 http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2008/09/bb-bbt-ceo-slams-bailout.html

I was striving to keep this article about the first bailout. Upon doing some research, I found that it gets so thick that the problem is not the individual issues we notice, like the lies with the first bailout. These individual causes are a result of a systemic problem. Going about fixing these things in their channels will never really fix anything. We need to abolish their channels.  Do something different.  It’s obvious that if there were any real merit to what they were doing on Capitol Hill they wouldn’t have rushed this legislation. They wouldn’t have increased the authority of an official who was never elected. But they did. To this day, the Treasury Department continues to lie and withhold information. How many times have you heard Timothy Geithner decline to comment on something he could have well commented on? Don’t forget how information on our government officials can be copyrighted then bought. If someone has another explanation for how this happened I’d love to hear it. SIFMA hasn’t emailed me back.

Housing values dropping is not a housing crisis. It a may be a financial crisis for individuals who had the idea that values could not drop, but where did they get that idea? If the value drops, then that is the new current value, easy right? The issue would have corrected itself, but people in control didn’t like the reality of it correcting itself. A lot of people did not like the idea their property was no longer a goldmine. The raised property values came at the expense of the lower income, and now the bailout comes at their expense as well. Imagine a lower income family trying to get one home with people buying multiple properties (to rent, or resale for profit). The inflated value would have made it quite hard for them but the Treasury Department never stepped in and said “Hey, all these people who don’t have homes can’t compete with people buying multiple properties, we are in a housing crisis” but doesn’t that sound more like a housing crisis? In comparison, this is a “Monopoly Crisis” but that would have been a harder sale. The approach was to help banks, of course, in a “Housing Crisis” who else but banks would you help?  It was not until it affected those with enough capital, that they considered anything a crisis, though people had been suffering long before the banks.

Now consider who is riding you as it is. Generations of controlling politicians and bankers have been living off your work rather comfortably for a long, long time. How much of your money goes to pay the debt of people who aren’t even alive to thank you for your troubles? So these same people put the pressure on you with these inflated housing values, and at the threat of a necessary correction in the values, they need to be bailed out by you. The same people who would have made you a bad loan for an overpriced house, or denied you credit for your own mismanagement of money, now need your help. But they don’t have to ask you, they just have to tug on our politicians strings and it all happens like it or not. I will say it again, there is no way to fix these problems in their system. We have politicians who are not elected, and the ones who are elected were bought by someone who was able to buy power over you. If you’re not infuriated it’s because you are asleep. You should wake up.