[Dialogue] new money

[W. J.]

Jim, in case you missed the announcement, the Fed admits that they will just print up some more money as necessary to keep the imperial ship financially afloat.
   
  Have you noticed how fabulous the Emperor's new clothes have recently become?
   
  Marshall

James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Something is really wrong in all this -- buying a bank
for $2 a share? now the fed is loaning directly to
investment banks? Our town, Tolleson, is leading the
Valley here in foreclosures -- 66 per 1000 . . .

I thought we were in debt from the war. Where is the
Fed getting the money to do this??

Oh, and hi, Ann, how are you? We spent a day with the
Moffet's last week on spring break.

Jim Wiegel
--- AWOODEWM at aol.com wrote:

> Here's a story with a twist.....In case you missed
> this article. I have to 
> say that I am not familiar with Greg Palast but it
> does sound plausible
> 
> Anne Wood
> 
> The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and
> Spitzer charges are 
> intimately linked
> 
> By Greg Palast
> Reporting for Air America Radio's Clout
> Â 
> Listen to Palast on Clout at www.GregPalast.com
> While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an
> 'escort' $4,300 in a 
> hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George
> Bush's new Federal Reserve 
> Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing
> over $200 billion in a tryst 
> with mortgage bank industry speculators.
> 
> Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's
> a BIG difference. The 
> Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man
> Bernanke was using ours.
> This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in
> its history, loaned a 
> selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion
> dollars to guarantee these banks' 
> mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public
> loot was an eye-popping 
> windfall to the very banking predators who have
> brought two million families to 
> the brink of foreclosure.
> Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely
> politician who stood in the 
> way of this creepy little assignation at the
> bankers' bordello: Eliot 
> Spitzer.
> Who are they kidding? Spitzer's lynching and the
> bankers' enriching are 
> intimately tied.
> How? Follow the money.
> The press has swallowed Wall Street's line that
> millions of US families are 
> about to lose their homes because they bought homes
> they couldn't afford or 
> took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey.
> That's blaming the victim.
> Here's what happened. Since the Bush regime came to
> power, a new species of 
> loan became the norm, the 'sub-prime' mortgage and
> it's variants including 
> loans with teeny "introductory" interest rates. From
> out of nowhere, a company 
> called 'Countrywide' became America's top mortgage
> lender, accounting for one in 
> five home loans, a large chuck of these 'sub-prime.'
> Here's how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US
> average household income, 
> gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their
> $955 a month payment is 
> 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker
> promises them a new mortgage, 
> again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two
> years, the promise ain't worth 
> a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram -
> because their house is now 
> worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits
> 9% or $1,609 plus fees 
> to recover the "discount" they had for two years.
> Suddenly, payments equal 42% 
> to 50% of pre-tax income. Grinnings move into their
> Toyota.
> Now, what kind of American is 'sub-prime.' Guess.
> No peeking. Here's a hint: 
> 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were
> given sub-prime loans 
> versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned
> borrowers aren't stupid – they 
> had no choice. They were 'steered' as it's called in
> the mortgage sharking 
> business.
> 'Steering,' sub-prime loans with usurious kickers,
> fake inducements to 
> over-borrow, called 'fraudulent conveyance' or
> 'predatory lending' under US law, 
> were almost completely forbidden in the olden days
> (Clinton Administration and 
> earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as
> nothing more than fancy 
> loan-sharking.
> But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and
> its banking brethren 
> were told to party hardy – it was OK now to
> steer'm, fake'm, charge'm and take'm.
> But there was this annoying party-pooper. The
> Attorney General of New York, 
> Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a
> fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
> Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok,
> Bush's regulators went on 
> the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to
> stop predatory 
> practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal
> power of "federal pre-emption," 
> Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their
> consumer protection laws.
> Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block
> Spitzer's investigation 
> of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush's banking
> buddies were especially 
> steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across
> the nation using New York State 
> laws.
> Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on
> their predatory enablers in 
> the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide
> was the Mother Shark, 
> its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others
> joined the sharkfest: Goldman 
> Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup's Citibank made
> mortgage usury their major 
> profit centers. They did this through a bit of
> financial legerdemain called 
> "securitization."
> What that means is that they took a bunch of junk
> mortgages, like the 
> Grinnings, loans about to go down the toilet and
> re-packaged them into "tranches" of 
> bonds which were stamped "AAA" - top grade - by bond
> rating agencies. These 
> gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe
> investments to US school 
> district pension funds and town governments in
> Finland (really).
> When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked
> off, investors were left 
> with the poop and the bankers were left with
> bonuses. Countrywide's top man, 
> Angelo Mozilo, will 'earn' a $77 million buy-out
> bonus this year on top of the 
> $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he
> pulled in from 1998 through 
> 2007.
> But there were rumblings that the party would soon
> be over. Angry 
> regulators, burned investors and the weight of
> millions of homes about to be boarded up 
> were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide's stock
> was down 50%, and 
> Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf
> sheiks who now control its biggest 
> share blocks.
> Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable
> happened. Carlyle Capital 
> went bankrupt. Who? That's Carlyle as in Carlyle
> Group. James Baker, Senior 
> Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George
> Bush, the Bin Laden family and 
> more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents
> than you can count.
> The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and
> dumped $200 billion on the 
> poor little suffering bankers. They got the public
> treasure – and got to keep 
> the Grinning's house. There was no 'quid' of a
> foreclosure moratorium for the 
> 'pro quo' of public bail-out. Not one family was
> saved – but not one banker 
> was left behind.
> Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value.
> Mozilo's Countrywide 
> stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their
> company's stock rise $10 
> billion in an afternoon.
> And that very same day the bail-out was decided –
> what a coinkydink! – the 
> man called, 'The Sheriff of Wall Street' was cuffed.
> Spitzer was silenced.
> Do I believe the banks called Justice and said,
> "Take him down today!" Naw, 
> that's not how the system works. But the big players
> knew that unless Spitzer 
> was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to
> spoil the party. Headlines in 
> the financial press – one was "Wall Street
> Declares War on Spitzer" - made 
> clear to Bush's enforcers at Justice who their
> number one target should be. And 
> it wasn't Bin Laden.
> It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made
> the bone-headed choice to 
> order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had
> just finished signing 
> these words for the Washington Post about predatory
> loans:
> "Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to
> protect consumers, it 
> 
=== message truncated ===>
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401 North Beverly Way 
Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401
+1 623-936-8671
+1 623-363-3277
jfwiegel at yahoo.com
www.partnersinparticipation.com

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to. Ashleigh Brilliant


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