Over a year after the hostages were first taken and the rAnSoM nOtE was discovered, the president is challenging the terrorists.
Dear [Negotiators]:
We have taken hostages. We hold the life savings of over 100 million US families, their pension funds, the current cash assets of millions of businesses, and the world's economy, in our hands. We have guns to their heads. Unless you do exactly as we say, they will all disappear. You need only look at our past behavior to understand we have no concern for their well being or the damage we will cause - even to our own corporations and stockholders. Take us seriously.
You will make two initial payments of 750 billion dollars each, totaling $1.5 trillion - the first in Q4 2008, the second in Q1 2009. We will decide whether there will be more payments after that.
- You will ignore most of the constituents who elected you and provided the money - who don't want us to have it.
- We will have no obligation to loan any of the money, as if we were still banks. That is obviously no longer how we make our money.
- When we pay the money directly to ourselves as bonuses and other compensation, you won't prevent it. Make it look like an accident.
...
The ransom note continued:
- You will ignore demands for transparency - no one will know who got how much money or how it will be spent. Say you're preventing panic. Say whatever you want. That's not our problem.
Once these payments to us have been made, no more than $75 billion dollars - 5% of the ransom - may be provided to prevent over 2 million annual home foreclosures that continue to result from the real estate based fraud, usury and extortion scheme we've been caught in. Yes, of course investing this way to prevent foreclosures would rescue many hostages and help end the crisis. That is not our goal.
If you exceed this quota, or make any attempt to clawback monies we have already obtained, we guarantee we will demand more ransom payments be made to us.
We don't recommend you make this ransom note public. We have no plans to release the hostages.
Sincerely,
Kerry K. Killinger, Angelo R. Mozila, John D. Finnegan, E. Stanley O'Neal, John A. Thain, Ken Lewis, et. al.
JPMorgan, BofA/WaMu/Merrill, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo/Wachovia, AIG
Today, while not directly acknowledging the ransom note or the negotiations, the President challenged the financial terrorists' methods for the first time, claiming: "Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is 'too big to fail.' "
While the ransom note has yet to be authenticated, its authenticity has become a moot point.
Until now the president and Congress have precisely followed and even exceeded the terrorists' demands. Amid millions of new mortgage foreclosures and 'underwater' home loans, only a few thousand received relief from the President's official $75B program. A few brave hostages have escaped on their own by demanding "show me the note" -- to be freed and even compensated when the terrorists' legal claims proved fraudulent.
Although today's announcement is aimed at preventing future ransom demands upon the goverment, there is no plan to rescue individual hostages, who are still expected to pay their own shares of the ransom in full.