"... salvage as much as possible ..."
As one Wall Street veteran explained to me, "I don't see one penny of that $700 billion ending up helping the broader economy. I see it being used to prop up share prices so the insiders can salvage as much as possible when dumping their shares".
Indeed, the $700 billion is just part of a massive "pump and dump" scheme engineered with the tacit approval of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Once the banksters have offloaded their fraudulent securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they will do whatever they need to do pad the bottom line and drive their stocks up.
That means they will shovel capital into hard assets, foreign currencies, gold, interest rate swaps, carry trade swindles, and Swiss bank accounts. The notion that they will recapitalize so they can provide loans to US consumers and businesses in a slumping economy is a pipedream.
Mike Whitney | Black Monday?
"History teaches us ..."
Even staunch conservatives with deep roots in Wall Street are alarmed at the possible political effects of the current economic policy. Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who is also a former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, sounded an economic and political alarm that echoed in the financial canyons around Wall Street when he wrote a column titled "Has Deregulation Sired Fascism?"
"The real issue is whether we, the people, allow powerful interests to use the economic collapse to create an even more unaccountable executive branch," he said during our interview. "History teaches us that it’s easier for government to give us our money back than it is for them to give us back the freedoms and civil liberties government takes."
Roberto Lavato | Economic 9-11: The Shrinking of Political Space
"... creating more money out of thin air ..."
Now we hear about taxpayer protections, about golden parachutes, and about other nuances that hardly cover up the fact that we would be creating more money out of thin air and further devaluing the dollar! The problem is not HOW the government is spending this money; it’s the fact that the government is spending this money.
We don’t have it. We are already nearly $10 trillion in debt, not including unfunded liabilities. We already spend about $1 trillion a year we don’t have on our overseas empire. Now nearly $1 trillion more is somehow supposed to magically appear and solve all our problems!
No — creating more money might delay the inevitable for some well-connected banks on Wall Street, but in a few weeks we will find ourselves right back in this same position, but much poorer.
Rep Ron Paul | Lipstick on a Bailout
"It's crazy. It's like we've lost our moorings."
Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill
