"The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them" Albert Einstein

Bailing out Robert Rubin's Citi isnt enough.....

while the UBER WEALTHY get WELFARE, what do the people most affected get from Rubin's Citi?

After 12 attempts in 25 years, Congress finally repeals Glass-Steagall, rewarding financial companies for more than 20 years and $300 million worth of lobbying efforts. Supporters hail the change as the long-overdue demise of a Depression-era relic.

...

On Oct. 22, Weill and John Reed issue a statement congratulating Congress and President Clinton*, including 19 administration officials and lawmakers by name. The House and Senate approve a final version of the bill on Nov. 4, and Clinton signs it into law later that month.

Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin**(see below), the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill's chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, "You're buying the government?"  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html

Yes, Citi BOUGHT government, and now Rubin's getting his NEXT big payola, ON TAXPAYERS BACK.....

Yer atalkin’ ta yerself adam.  The Cretins have nothing to say because they are puzzled by anything they have to think about.  They don’t understand an interesting posting, even though My 2 cents did pontificate about it how it is sorely needed.  They're puzzled by anything for which there are no talking points for them to plug and play.

s, it seems that after the big Stooper Bowl game, BOTH sides are out in the parking lot drunk and full of bratwurst wanderng  around aimlessly, congratulating themselves on such a well played game while critizizing individual players, not realizing that they emptied out non only their wallets during the, but their bank accounts and future earning to the Team OWNERS....

U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit (Update2)

By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.

“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”

November 24, 2008 "Gawker" -- Hey, the government has agreed to bail out Citigroup. Surely we'll now be saved from worldwide insolvency! Right? Or is this a profligate waste of money? We have to level with you: this whole bailout thing has now exceeded the media's ability to critically analyze it. You've heard everyone throw around figures like $750 billion for the earlier bailout costs. This Citigroup thing includes a guarantee of $306 billion in assets. But think about this: according to Bloomberg, the US government has now pledged more than $7.4 trillion to rescue the financial system in the past 15 months. How much is 7.4 trillion?

• It is "half the value of everything produced in the nation last year," according to Bloomberg.

Enought to CUT a check for every single citizen?

IT is the CITIZENS who will cut checks TO these UBER WEALTHY...

Now of course this is ONLY for the last 15 months, and we are ONLY at the beginning of this Democratic Installed BAnking CRISIS....

Rubin-clones And Other Fakers

By Mike Whitney

November 27, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" --- Things are getting crazier by the day. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that the Fed would commit another $800 billion to fight the financial crisis which has spread to the broader economy and is causing sharp declines in consumer spending. The Fed plans to buy $600 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and another $200 billion of Triple A bonds from non-bank financial companies that provide financing for consumers. There's just one little hitch, Fannie and Freddie are already owned by the government, so buying the bad paper is like moving the figures from one ledger to another. It's pointless. Except for the fact, that by shuffling the paperwork, Bernanke can drive down long-term interest rates and (hopefully) rekindle flagging home sales. It's quite a trick.

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Bernanke and Paulson are trying to tackle the financial crisis from the wrong end. This isn't about liquidity or "access to credit", its about confidence. The public's trust has been betrayed a million times over. They've been tricked with WMD, bamboozled with phantom enemies, and cheated with bogus securities. All the surveys say the same thing; public confidence is at an all-time low. As a result, fear and pessimism are more widespread than any time in recent history. People no longer expect tomorrow to be better than today. In fact, they expect it to be worse, and for good reason. The country has broken loose from its moorings and is adrift. There's no accountability at any level of government anymore; it doesn't matter how big or heinous the crime, no one pays. The justice system is a sham. In fact, the D.O.J. is just a weapon for destroying political enemies; that's it. ...

... Even now, with the economy teetering at the brink of disaster, high-ranking officials like Paulson are still diverting hundreds of billions of dollars from the Treasury to their Wall Street buddies leaving nothing behind but a few scraps for the working stiffs. And Paulson isn't alone either; his Darwinian "dog eat dog" creed is the prevailing ethos of the corrupt oligarchy that runs the country, Republican and Democrat alike, it makes no difference. It's "me first" and the public be damned. 

... The nation's confidence has been shaken and people are developing a bunker mentality.

... Lawrence Summers pushed for the repeal of the laws which prevented commercial banks from merging with the Wall Street casinos and he also helped to deregulate derivatives trading which now threatens to bring down the entire financial system if a major player, like Citigroup, goes under.

Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers were central figures in the bubble-driven growth and deregulation mania of the last decade. Their influence factored heavily into the speculation that was brought on by low interest rates, easy credit and massive leverage; the lethal combo that created the present crisis. Their elevation to the top positions in the administration --along with Paul Volcker--proves that the Obama presidency is just more political fakery; a charming and charismatic figurehead placed in front of the executive podium to conceal the machinations of deeply-entrenched interests who are busy rebuilding the trickle-down system from the ground up. There's nothing new here, and certainly nothing progressive. The much-celebrated "Dream Team" is an amalgam of Rubin-clones who used Obama as a land-bridge to the White House to strengthen the status quo and get on with the task of shifting the nation's wealth to Wall Street's economic royalists.

The fact is, the Obama star-studded economic recovery team emerges from the same ideological petris-dish as Bernanke and Paulson. Their world view is shaped by the same strong sense of entitlement which will ultimately prevent them from enacting the regulatory reforms that they need to be put in place to restore transparency, confidence and credibility. Instead, they will unleash a torrent of stimulus spending (infrastructure and green technology mainly) followed by unorthodox monetarist/fiscal chicanery (like purchasing stocks on the equities market or buying long-term Treasurys) all of which will hide the fact that they are not forcing the bad debts out into the open so they can be written down and the markets can reestablish equilibrium.

No one disputes that Geithner, Summers and Volcker are smarter and more competent than Team Bush, and that, their Keynesian plan to inject massive doses of stimulus into the economy will have a positive effect. But that's as far as it goes. The men behind these remedies are limited by institutional loyalties that will keep them from overhauling the system in meaningful way. Neither Summers, nor Geithner nor Volcker would ever dare to tamper with the revenue-producing system which maintains the orderly division between rich and poor. That just won't happen.

With Gates, Obama Opts for Empire

By Matthew Rothschild

December 01, 2008 "The Progressive "  --- Barack Obama’s got a big problem.

He’s suckered himself into believing that we need a bipartisan foreign and military policy.

And so he’s reappointing Robert Gates as head of the Defense Department.

Let’s remember: Gates was head of the CIA during Bush I. As such, he was involved in the invasion of Panama, the funding of a genocidal regime in Guatemala, the support of Suharto’s brutal government in Indonesia, and the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti.

With Bush I, he pushed the first war against Saddam Hussein, even when it seemed that Saddam was preparing to withdraw from Iraq.

And now with Bush II, he’s been running the Iraq War, which Obama vowed to end.

And Gates has come out with modernizing our nuclear weapons arsenal—that means making new nukes—even though Obama talked about nuclear disarmament during the campaign.

Something’s terribly wrong with this picture.

And it’s simply this: Obama doesn’t really want a change in foreign and military policy. He said as much during the campaign when he praised Bush Sr. and said he wanted to return to the bipartisan consensus of the last forty years.

In those forty years, the United States waged war against Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It helped overthrow the Allende government in Chile. It supported Suharto’s invasion of East Timor. It financed and trained death squads in Central America. And on and on.

With the Gates choice, Obama proves he’s not about ending the U.S. empire.

He’s about running the U.S. empire—with less bravado than Bush-Cheney, but perhaps more efficiently.

And he’s perfectly willing to use the old hands like Gates, bloody as they are, to get that job done.

Obama's Kettle of Hawks

I am not hanging ANYONE, all I am doing is EXPOSING what OBAMA IS DOING.....

YOU want to PLAY TEAM sports.....and make it Blue TEAM vs Red TEAM

I WANT OBAMA'S feet held to the FIRE!

Now if you want to talk about someone worthy of HANDING.....

There are plenty of WAR CRIMINALS still in the White House.....Thanks to the Democrats....