Here we go again ... super-charging the Greed-gamblers -- who do not have a word in their Vocabulary for: Enough!
Critics Say Spending Bill Includes a Bonanza for Wall Street
by Erin McClam, nbcnews.com -- Dec 12, 2014
Tucked into a bill to keep the federal government open is a provision that opponents say amounts to a giveaway for the big banks that will raise the likelihood of a catastrophic replay of the 2008 financial crash.
[...]
One of the provisions of the law [Dodd Frank] says that if banks want to trade certain types of the risky, complex financial instruments known as derivatives, they must do so in a subsidiary that is not backed by federal deposit insurance.
As proponents of tighter financial regulation point out, repealing that provision makes it more likely that taxpayers will be on the hook for another bailout if the banks' risky bets on derivatives trigger big losses.
[...]
My my my, How soon we forget ...
"please, please don't let the Bank-Ledgers go Bust" ...
Talks Implode During a Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved
by David M. Herszenhorn, Carl Hulse, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, nytimes.com -- Sept 25, 2008
[...]
Friday morning, on CBS’s “The Early Show,” Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the lead Democratic negotiator, said the bailout had been derailed by internal Republican politics.
“I didn’t know I was going to be the referee for an internal G.O.P. ideological civil war,” Mr. Frank said, according to The A.P.Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.
[...]
Remember the trillion dollar TARP Fix?
Yup, sort of.
Remember the all the Wall Street Bankers who went to Jail and Lost Everything they ever gained, from their rigged and risky gambling?
Neither do I ... But Here we Go again:
Paulson, Treasury officials turn tables on TARP targets
by Isabelle Clary and Barry B. Burr, pionline.com -- November 24, 2008
[...]
By the time Congress authorized the TARP on Oct. 3 to purchase illiquid securities, “market conditions worsened considerably” and such action “would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem,” [Treasury Secretary Henry M.] Paulson said.
[...]
“I won't apologize for changing (the focus of TARP) when facts changed,” Mr. Paulson said. The Treasury Department “will continue to examine whether targeted forms of asset purchase can play a useful role, relative to other potential uses of TARP resources, in helping to strengthen our financial system and support lending,” he added.
[...]
“In mid-September, before economic conditions worsened, $700 billion in troubled asset purchases would have had a significant impact. Half of that sum, in a worse economy, simply isn't enough firepower. ... We recognized that a troubled asset purchase program, to be effective, would require a massive commitment of (the Troubled Asset Relief Program),” Mr. Paulson said in prepared remarks before the House Financial Services Committee.
Mr. Paulson defended his decision to instead inject $250 billion in financial institutions, saying “there is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced.” He reiterated that the Treasury Department's goal remains to stabilize the financial system and contain the housing market crisis.
[...]
There may not have been a "playbook" for the molasses-like recovery from their gambling losses --
with our mortgages -- but there certainly was a "
blank checkbook" for it ... for propping up Greed-gamblers' Bad-bets.
For buying up Toxic Assets, that the actual "Free Market" wouldn't touch with a 100-to-1 foot pole.
Well, it wasn't really THAT bad, was it? There was No mass-panic "run on the banks," was there, like back in the 30's?
My my my, How soon we forget ... "Past Results are No Guarantee of Future Performance."
(Those TARP Figures are current as of October 31, 2009. Click here for an explanation of the abbreviations and programs in the chart.)
That little red dot in the bottom of the chart represents the "Unsecured Obligations" that sent the city of Detroit, into an Emergency Manager "Fire-Sale" dictatorship.
The rest of the Chart is what the US Taxpayers had to pony up, to Bailout the Greed-gamblers -- the last time they squandered all OUR sweat-equity assets (our Home-equity; our future Society-building capital).
Some Congress-persons Do Not Care about pesky history like that. And some Congress-persons DO ... (even back then) ...
Keeping tabs on the bailout
by Elizabeth Warren, boston.com -- April 12, 2009
[... Elizabeth] Warren was recently interviewed by Globe deputy editorial page editor Dante Ramos [...]
Q: Do you have a clear sense of what the overall TARP plan at this point is supposed to do? Are you capable of summarizing what it's supposed to be doing?
A: No. And neither is Treasury. Treasury has given us multiple contradictory explanations for what it's trying to accomplish.
There's a major problem and a minor problem. The minor problem is documentation. I've spent four weeks now looking for someone who can give me the details of the stress test so that we can do an independent evaluation of whether the stress test is any good.
We get: "someone will call [you] right back." Only the call doesn't come.
The major problem is that Treasury has not articulated its goals. And without that, we can't have a robust debate about whether they're headed in the right direction; instead, we're stuck with this more technical argument about the implementation of the [Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility] or the details of the Capital Acquisition Program. And that misses the central question of, should we be subsidizing failing banks or liquidating them? When we acquire capital, should we exercise more control over the institutions that take the money or less control? Those are the central policy issues that the American public has a right to participate in.
[...]
It's not like those Billion dollar Bank Bailouts weren't tagged to Our citizen ledgers to pay-off, you know ... Billions that could have been much better spent elsewhere ... like on roads, schools, vocational training, soup kitchens etc etc.
larger
Those TARP Numbers in that Pie Chart are in BILLIONS, by the way.
Elizabeth Warren pursues Oversight, thru TARP Maze
by jamess -- Apr 12, 2009
It's not like the Greed-Casino adds much of "real concrete value" to Our overall Economy ...
Ratigan reviews Frontline's Warning, labels Wall Street as Legalized Gambling
by jamess -- Oct 23, 2009
It's just that the Wall Street Bankers Own the Place -- and we should just be thankful, they still let us have an 'illusion of' a People-led democracy.
Those floating balances in that Derivative Casino, in that last chart by the way, is in TRILLIONS. In the Hundreds of Trillions.
Once again, soon to be backed and funded by FDIC Taxpayer dollars AGAIN -- All thanks to a Congress that would never to try to pass such a Wall Street give-away -- in the glaring, stark light of day!
Here we Go again ... Their high-stakes Casino is Now Re-Opened.
Place your bets Gamblers, THAT IS if you already have a seat on the very selective, speculative street ... or a seat in the co-opted Congress, that empowers them, by placing "ransom demands," that could never get away with, in the normal light of an 'of, for, and by-the-People' day.