The fleecing of the Taxpayers!!

Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have morphed from being too big to fail, into giants that when and if they fail today their tumble to the ground will surpass the largest earthquake ever experienced on the North American continent. All of them combined have over 14,420 subsidiaries, a fact that today makes them impervious to any sort of regulation. A point of fact a recent analysis by the Kansas City Fed has shown that it would take over 70,000 examiners hitting the books 24/7 to inspect such trillion-dollar banks with the same level of attention normally applied to a community bank. Senator Scott Brown (RMass) said, The complexity is so overwhelming that no regulator can follow it well enough to regulate the way we need to, he is in the process of drafting a bill to bust-up the MegaBanks. Recall if you will Henry Merrit Hank Paulson Junior, who was confirmed as our nations TreasurySecretary on June 28th, 2006 previous to that he was part of Goldman Sachs, where he swung up the ladder to eventually take the position as Chief Executive Officer of its Chicago Office, where his compensation package in 2005 was $37mil, in 2006 somewhere around $16.4mil with his net worth are $700 million, before he was confirmed as our nations money guy he was required to liquidate all of his stock holdings in Goldman Sacks some $600million. During his career at Goldman he was very, very instrumental in establishing

James L Bradley Kanook Sept 20th - 2013

intimate relations with the elite in China, visiting China over 70 times in setting up packages that eventually saw many American jobs shift to China. It was through his efforts that the American Taxpayer committed $700 billion to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed, yet to hear the bankers spin the story along with Paulson and his allies along the Potomac the bail-out was the best thing since sliced bread to the hit the American economy. In fact they maintain it prevented another Great Depression, and now were being peddled that the money has all been paid back, and Taxpayers even made a profit no harm, no foul. BS! The largest load of bovine droppings weve experienced since we were convinced that WMDs were laying about in Iraq, why not - the administration had pulled that off, what is another scheme to pick the American taxpayers pocket. A major part of the big lie was that the taxpayers were stepping in (only temporarily, mind you) to prop up the economy, in turn saving the world from financial catastrophe. What has actually happened is that the American Taxpayer was committed to a plan that was constructed of a permanent, blind support or an ungovernable, hyper-concentrated new financial system that continues to build on the greed and inequality that caused the crash in the first place, whereas now the same players on Wall Street such as Goldman Sachs and the Citigroup are steadily increasing their risk rather than reducing it. Result, like before, if one risky plunge based on a sideways decision happens again the house of cards will crumble and fall twice as far and hard to the floor. So in the words of a few, where the American Taxpayer firmly believed that our help would be a temporary situation we now find ourselves saddled with a family of greedy financial players who have moved into our lives forever, sleeping nine to a bed and sucking from the American Taxpayer like those blood suckers youve seen in the movie African Queen. The lying continues, the American Taxpayer has been subjected to many falsehoods over the past four-years, none as shameless as the bucketful of BS thrown their way of the financial rescue, whereas money wasnt the only commodity given to Wall Street, your government has conferred the right to bury or hide the truth from you in the street this right based on

the fact that Wall Street was busting its chops helping regular people and creating jobs. One former Inspector General Neil Barofsky says, It is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The fact that the bailouts were a mass deception is hardly discussed in coffee shops in the US, unfortunately the taxpayers have become accustomed to the twisting of information (commonly known as lies) that flood from the sacred halls of our lawmakers the deception continues today with hardly a break in breath. It is very important to remember that the lies were the key elements of the bailout, where in a normal action on Wall Street investors would have run screaming (those that choose to be informed) from a financially corrupt marketplace but since the taxpayer (government) has overstepped its own common sense in supporting the scheme with flowery narratives that the problems of 2008 have NOT been cured. Although these very same investors do not (in most instances) believe the lie, they invest in any case knowing that if the curtain again comes down the government will step in and shovel more taxpayer funds toward fixing the crash. Lies led to the taxpayer Bailout Counting on the miniscule memory of the public at large, Paulson like his big boss GWB and his warning that Saddam was going to launch drones to spray poison of NYC, he laid out a series of out-and-out lies to the Congress about the US financial situation. The bailouts were pushed through Congress with a well packaged load of threats and promises, one in particular that smacked our dunderheads along the Potomac, summarizes their mentality when on Sept 18th, 2008 at 11 a.m. he sat in a meeting (with every appendage crossed) and spun out a lies that told the members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would vanish by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse in 24-hours. An episode only found within the show called Beavis and Butt-Head in simple words he basically mutter can you, like, give me some money?

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) recalls a call with Paulson and the FED chairman Ben Bernanke, We need $700 billion, and we need it in threedays. And then they added the real kicker, Paulson could spend the $700 billion however he pleased without review, by any court of law or any administrative agency. Thank you very much were going to screw the American Taxpayer. Actually the GWB White House and the leaders of both parties agreed to this preposterous greedy attempt to steal from the American Taxpayer, fortunately 95 Democrats in the House did not for once in his two-term role of a free America a sensible part of our society showed a bit of sanity in Washington. Not to be deterred Paulson created a more convincing lie. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, whereas the Treasury Secretary (Paulson) would buy $700 billion of troubled mortgages (born with the transfer of jobs [which he helped create] outside of our border by the corporations) from the banks and then modify them to help struggling homeowners. Section 109 of the Act specifically empowers the Treasury Secretary to facilitate loan modifications to prevent avoidable foreclosures. With the promise on the table, the gun shy Democrats finally approved the bailout on Oct 3rd, 2008. It was that provision that floated it by the Democrats. Shenanigans ran the road, a few days after the Acts passage the Federal Reserve and the Treasury (Paulson) unilaterally decided to abandon the planned purchase of toxic mortgages (which got the bill passed) in favor of a direct injection of billions in cash into companies like Goldman and Citigroup. Over night Section 109 was thrown out the window, and what was pitched as a bailout of both banks and homeowners instantly became a bank-only operation. This ditching of Section 109 was the only the first in a long series of actions in which the bailout officials casually ignored or openly defied they own promise with regard to TARP. Congress moved up-on-step with the moves of the FED and Paulson, where Rep David Scott (D-Georgia), hot under the collar remarked more than once, Weve been lied to, in addition Republican Senators David Vitter of

Louisiana and James Inhofe of Oklahoma sponsored a bill in January 2009 to cancel the remaining $350 billion of TARP. The officials responded with another proposal full of ever larger buckets of pure BS to get it by the Congress a 2nd time a process that begin of January 12th and 15th, 2009 before Obama took the oath of office. Yet it was Larry Summers1, the Senior Economic Advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, who sent a pair of letters to Congress, where Larry (the pudgy, stubbyfingered) former World Bank economist, who had been forced out as Harvard president for suggesting that women lacked a natural aptitude for math and science, begged legislators to reject Vitters bill and leave TARP alone. The pudgy Summers laid out a five-point plan where the bailout was pitched as a giant populist program to help ordinary Americans. Obama (Larry vowed), would use the money to stimulate bank lending to put people back to work. To reinforce his BS, he said that banks would be denied funding unless they agreed to increase lending above baseline levels. Tear streaking down his fat face he promised that tough and transparent conditions would be imposed on bailout recipients, who would NOT be allowed to use bailout funds toward ENRICHING SHAREHOLDERS OR EXECUTIVES. As contained in the original TARP bill, (once again his eyes raised to heavens) pledged that bailout money would be used to AID homeowners in foreclosureand as his close, he promised that the BAILOUTS would be temporary --- with a plan for exit of government intervention IMPLEMENTED as quickly as possible. One Senator Mark Begich (D-Alaska) fell for the BS hook-line-and-sinker, I feel like theyve given me a lot of commitment on the housing front. Needless to say, once again TARP was flushed through Congress the bailouts green-lighted with the aid of the Democrats. At the end-of-the-day none of the tear-streaked promises happened, with the exception of a small-slice of TARP set-aside for foreclosure relief, a program that was so filled with problems resulting in very little aid to struggling homeowners but what the hay, the BAILOUT ARCHITECTS didnt really give a damn about a few homeowners they had bigger fish to fry,
1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

The officials were sucked up overnight and slipped out the door for dark political reasons to pull the wool over the eyes of Congress, in this making good one other promise that the exit of the government and any kind of government intervention or control. They handed over huge buckets of Taxpayer Money, with no strings attached, to Wall Street, whereas without the BS peddled by the slicksters. As quoted by Rep Raul Grijalva, without those assurances, the level of opposition would have remained the same, as a leading progressive who voted against TARP, in the end as proven the promise of housing aid was a massive paper tiger. In a well planned move by the White House advisors POTUS on February 18th, 2009 announced HAMP, a program designed to aid poor homeowners the next day with arms waving in the air and spittle spilling from his flapping lips, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli blew his brains around yelling that Obama was planning to use BAILOUT MONEY to help the poor. His actions on nationwide TV is credited with giving birth the TEA PARTY, which to this day condemns with vigor any program aimed at the poor. His rant chuck-a-block full of negative feelings toward poor and minority homeowners facing foreclosure. He labeled the action as subsidizing losers mortgages whereas the nation should reward people that could carry the water, instead of drink the water. This water drinkers became the rallying cry of the TEA PARTY and still is today where were this off-the-track Party a couple of months previous when the US TAXPAYERS hander over billions in cash to the TOO BIG TO FAIL BANKS, good question. The government gave a BLANK CHECK to GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS, you know those in the millionaire and billionaire class believe it or not members of the TEA PARTY still believe that in the near future some of the billions will TRICKLE DOWN to their dusty wallets. Once again the government was successful in diverting attention away from the obvious. At the start of HAMP $50 billion was pulled from the TARP funds, in 2010 the amount was cut to $30 billion, and in November of 2012 a mere $4 billion has been spent for loan modifications and other homeowner aid. Compared to the funds spent otherwise it is sorta like comparing the Himalayas to Mount Dewey behind my home town in Alaska.

Counted as one of the biggest failures of the Obama administration, the BAILOUT PROGRAM designed to help those lazy, job-adverse, waterdrinking minority homeowners (the one that gave birth to the TEA PARTY this pimple on a elephants butt compared to amount of un-regulated cash given to the FAT CATS on Wall Street) which ranks right up there with the actions of JFKs father who made his millions selling Irish Whiskey to Al Capone and his alley cats. Personally I think right-from-the-get-go Obama stepped in it when he chose Timothy Franz Geithner as his Secretary of the Treasury, whereas between 2003 and 2009 he was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a major player in the overall BAILOUT SCHEME for GWBs plan and under Obamas watch was the chief-official in charge of the no-stringsattached bank rescue for four-years after GWB left office. As lame as HAMP turned out to be, it still stands out as one of the few pre-bailout promises that was even partially fulfilled whereas every other promise pudgy Summers made were total bullshit, including the most important promise of all the pledge to use the bailout money to put PEOPLE BACK TO WORK. The lie grew and grew Once TARP passed, the government quickly began loaning out billions to some 500 banks that it deemed healthy and viable a few packages were cash loans repayable at 5% with the first five-years; other deals came due when a bank stock achieved a pre-determined value. Remember, as long as banks held TARP money they were banned from shelling out big cash bonuses to top executives. Later as loose is security is on the shores of the Potomac it was learned that even before Larry Summers wept on paper to Congress that the banks would be required to increase lending as a condition for receiving bailout funds, the officials in charge decided to NOT EVEN ask the banks to use the money for lending! As a matter-of-fact theyd decided NOT TO EVEN ask banks to monitor what they did with the BAILOUT MONEY. Barofsky the TARP inspector, asked Treasury to include a requirement forcing recipients to explain what they did with the TAXPAYER MONEY. The

TARP administrator Kashkari rejected his proposal, telling him that lenders would walk away from the program if they had to deal with too many conditions. In a phrase, The banks wont participate, he replied. The TARP inspector (not from Wall Street, as only one of the bailout officials), didnt for one second buy into the answer knowing full well that the cash-desperate banks would NOT turn down billions in aid. It was like they (officials of TARP) were with fear that the banks wouldnt take the money, I never found that terribly convincing. At the-end-of-the-day, there was NO LENDING requirement attached to ANY aspect of the BAILOUT, and there NEVER would be. Banks used their hundreds of billions for almost every purpose under the sun everything, that is, but leading to homeowners, small businesses, and the cities they had destroyed gambling with the depositors money. The capper was they used the money to qualify for even more free TAXPAYER money. Remember healthy and viable, to guarantee their financial soundness, all major banks are required to keep a certain amount of reserve cash at the Federal Reserve. In years past, that money DIDNT earn interest, for the logical reason that banks shouldnt get paid to stay SOLVENT. But in 2006 arguing that banks were loosing profits on cash buried at the FED regulators agreed to make small interest (0.25%) payments on the money. A regulation that was not set to go into effect until 2011 but when the crash hit (brought on by the banks), a section was written into TARP that launched the interest payments in Oct 2008. In theory, there should never be much money stashed in the FED reserve accounts, whereas a bank could make more money on the open market, instead of the measly 0.25% with the FED. In August 2008, before the bailout began, there was just $2 billion in excess reserves parked at the FED, wait, by October 2008 the value gathering dust (and interest payments) exploded to $267 billion, and by January 2009 it was $843 billion. Today the amount is $1.4+ trillion! Translation, there is more money gathering dust and interest in the FED accounts than Congress had approved for either TARB or the much hated Obama stimulus. Whereas instead of lending their new cash to struggling homeowners and small business, as Larry Summers had promised,

the banks are literally sitting on it puffing on their $1500 Cuban cigars, while their cheering section the TEA PARTH screams and rants a raves about feeding school children. As I once was told, by a friendly small town banker, money is worthless unless its working, this stashed money is doing nothing other than collecting 0.25% risk free payments. Estimates show that the cash laying about in the FED is hauling in some $3.6 billion in interesta small amount, granted, yet it almost matches the total amount of bailout money spent to aid homeowners. In other words, banks are making almost as much per-year as the amount spent over a period of 4-years of aid to struggling homeowners yea America!! The banks just didnt put their now extra-cash in the FED, instead of using the bailout money to jump-start the economy Wall Street made use of the funds to move on making the economy more dangerous. From the get-go, TAXPAYER money was used to subsidize a string of finance mergers, such as the Chase-Bear Stearns deal with Wells Fargo/Wachovia merger and the Bank of Americas acquisition with Merrill Lynch with a huge help from the Bailout Funds, being Too Big to Fail morphed into a deal making process that became Too Big to Pass Up! Other financial institution made a paper journey back to the TAXPAYERS pot, In Oct 2010 the President endorsed another BAILOUT BILL creating a program labeled the Small Business Lending Fund. This bill set up to assist firms with less than $10 billion in assets could dip into, a fund designed to share in a pool of $4 billion in Public Money. However of the 332 companies that apply and received money, one-third of them (banks) used some of the money received was used to repay their original TARP loans the funds from the Small Business Lending Fund had a much lower interest rate than the TARP rate. This move also exempted them from the limits on Executive Bonuses mandated by the TARP program, examination of the transactions showed that of the $4 billion, $2.2 billion was moved about ending up paying off the TARP loansJohn Schmidt the CEO of Iowa-based Heartland Financial took $81.7 million from the newly created fund and used every penny to repay their TARP loan. By now you must realize (if youre still reading) unless you got out of bed and fell flat on your face that the TARP program was the biggest scam pulled

on the American Public since the War in Iraq. Where the financial houses across the land, flushed their vaults, parked billions in the FED and did NOT use the funds as designed in the bill that passed Congress TARP didnt result in much new business lending or aiding the homeowner brought to his knees by Big Business moving jobs overseas, or their savings in 401Ks flushed out the door by the gamblers on Wall Street TARP didnt ever come close. What it did do was replace the funds in the very same institutions that created and sold and purchased those worthless stacks of mortgages peddled to each other and across the Western Worlda Ponzi Scheme of the greatest magnitude which is still rippling through our base economy. The banks became like you favorite house pet, sucking up to their favorite dish, the US TAXPAYER money dish, whereas instead of pumping money back into the country, buried it in a risk-free coffee can in the FEDs backyardactually the biggest BAILOUT recipient Citigroup watched their lending drop by 3.1% the largest drop in the country. TARP didnt flood the banking system with billions for loans, it just flooded the banking system with billions for the banks. Remember the requirement healthy and viable Banks The primary reason that banks didnt lend out bailout funds, as later determined, was simple. Many of them needed the funds just to SURVIVE which shows up as another broken promise to Congress and the TAXPAYER, whereas the fund was to be dedicated to those banks that were viable. Soon after TARP passed (2008), weasel Paulson and his buddies announced the guidelines for their unilaterally changed bailout plan. Congress had approved (remember) $700 billion to buy up the nations TOXIC MORTGAGES, Paulson and his group of gangsters shifted $250 billion to direct capital injections for banks. At the time Paulson claimed that in doing this, banks was a faster way to restore market confidence than lending it to homeowners, he later in his stumbling something to hide manner confessed that he had been contemplating the direct-cash-injection even before Congress voted.

The new lets-just-fork-over-cash portion of the bailout was called the Capital Purchase Program (CPP). With the CPP, nine of Americas largest banks that included Citi, Wells Fargo, Coldman, Morgan Stanly, Bank of America, State Street and the Bank of New York Mellon sucked in $125 billion, 50% of the funds flushed from Americas TAXPAYERS. Keep in mind that at the time these nine entities accounted for 75% of all the assets held in American banks ($11 trillion) in a sense making it believable that they would receive the lions share. Yet, in announcing the CPP, Paulson and his masked thieves remember promised that they would ONLY be stuffing TAXPAYER cash into healthy and viable banks. This was the entire core of the BAILOUT; whereas the huge infusion of TAXPAYER cash would NOT BE USED to rescue individual banks, but to KICK-START the economy as a whole helping HEALTHY banks start lending again2. The next move begin the legend that the Wall Street banks ONLY TOOK THE BAILOUT MONEY because they were forced too they didnt NEED all those billions they sucked it in, you understand, for the good of the Country. Jamie Dimon the #1 slickster at Chase later claimed that we only took the money because we were asked to by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Chief bandito at Goldman claimed the same, we never needed the money, and that he wouldnt have taken it if hed known it was this pregnant with potential for backlash. Jointly Paulson, Bernanke and FDIC chief Sheila Bair heaped praises on the nine leading banks as healthy institutions that were accepting the cash only to enhance the overall performance of the United States economy. Right after the bailouts were rolling out the US Treasury, soon-to-be Secretary of the Treasury (Obamas 2nd failure of judgment) Tim Geithner admitted to Inspector General Neil Barofsky, that he and his cohorts had chosen the first nine bailout recipients simply because of their size, and didnt bother to asses their health and viability. Paulson, later admitted that he had serious concerns about least one of the nine entities he had publicly declared HEALTHY.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

In Nov-2009 the FED big boss Bernanke in a closed-door interview with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission , who was charged with investigating the causes of the economic meltdown, Bernanke admitted that 12 of the 13 most prominent financial entities in the United States were on the brink of FAILURE during the time of the initial bailouts (92.3% were operating on BS). Almost all of those linked to the bailout knew that the top banks were in deep trouble. TARP Inspector Barofsky said, It became obvious pretty much as soon as I took the job that those companies werent really healthy and viable. With subsequent actions a precedent was established with the government allowing unhealthy banks to NOT ONLY call themselves healthy, but to get the GOVERNMENT to endorse their claims. Projecting this image of soundness, to the gang in the government, was more important than telling the truth. Geithner and Paulson still believe that market fears about corruption in the banking system was/is a bigger problem than the corruption itself. Over and over again they justified TARP as a move to bolster confidence in the system and by all means worked hard at keeping the banks INSOLVENCY SECRET. In this they created a two-tier financial market, those who knew the truth and those who did not. A month or less after the bailout team declared that the top nine banks healthy, Citi was in the Emergency Room with its heart flat lining weeks after Paulson and his gangsters gave Citi $25 billion Citi was still in its death journey where they posted a loss of more than $17 billion the went back to Paulson begging for more. In November 2008 they received another $20 billion and more than $300 billion in government guarantees, what is hard-tobelieve is that they were magically government endorsed as being healthy because of the BAILOUT, not because they had a healthy cash flow or excellent business ratings. Used in rating a financial institution the FED, FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency roll out the CAMELS system or Capital, Assets, Management, Earnings, Liquidity and Sensitivity to RISK. They rate the firms on scale of one-to-five, one a good rating and five in the dumps. At the peak of the economic crisis or meltdown just as Citi was rolling in the big bucks the 2nd time, in what would eventually turn-out to be three massive TAXPAYER

bailouts, the bank enjoyed a 3-rating in other words a passing grade. Sheila Bair in her book Bull by the Horns, when she was the big boss at the FDIC, expressed utter astonishment to the Big Boss of the OCC John Dugan, Citi was rated as a CAMEL-3, when it was on the brink of failure, she remarked. Big John replied, since the government planned on bailing out Citi, the OCC did NOT plan to change its supervisory rating. In other words, never mind that they were a major source of the financial meltdown their management was on the up-and-up, in addition to the -3 rating the FDIC gave Citi a systemic risk exception. Which by law would allow them to access FDIC-BAILOUT help, even though those who punched the clock at the FDIC knew damn well they were a bank on the verge of collapse. They also knew that a year previous to the bailouts that Citi had been working a grand scheme of fraud on the public by pretending to be far healthier than their books demonstrated. In some cases the fraud was upfront and plain to see, such as in the case of the Lehman Brothers, who cooked their books using an arcane accounting trick to book tens-ofbillions of loans as revenue each quarter, making it appear that they had more cash than they really had. In other cases the fraud was more on the sly, as in the case of Citi, which in 2007 paid out the 3 rd highest dividend in America ($10.7 billion), this despite the fact that Citi had lost $9.8 billion in the last quarter of 2007 alone. The massively played Ponzi-like financial sector were held together by backroom deals across the entire Wall Street, whereas the FED and the agencies of the GWB government knew that many banks were 95% dependent of a continual influx of new money from the likes of sales in their sub-prime mortgages to cover up massive future liabilities from toxic investments that, sooner or later, were going to come waltzing home to haut them. So, instead of using the BAILOUTS as a clear-the-air moment, the government decided to double-down on the fraud, awarding healthy ratings to these failing banks and even giving further assistance by Paulson and his gangsters in twisting its numerical audits and assessments to slip into the cooked-up narratives.

One important component sold to Congress was that the original TARP bailout was a promise to ensure full and accurate accounting by conducting regular stress tests of the bailout recipients. When Timmy the boy-wonder Geithner announced his stress-test plan in February 2009, a reporters blasted him with a obvious and damning question, Doesnt the fact that you have to conduct these tests prove that BANK REGULATORS, who should already know plenty about banks solvency, actually have no idea who is solvent and who isnt? The government did conduct regular stress tests of all major bailout recipients, but they were such a sham that Saturday Night Live lampooned them, in one skit Geithner abandons a planned numerical score system because it would unfairly penalize banks who were not good at banking. In 2009, just after the 1st round of tests were released, it leaked out that the FED had allowed banks to literally re-jigger (cook) the numbers to make their bottom-lines look better. When the FED found the Bank of America had a $50 billion capital hole, the bank stuffed a few bank examiners backpockets with some cash laying around and they cut the $50 billion by $15 billion, pointed their fingers that errors made by examiners in the analysis. Citigroup got is negative number of $35 billion slashed to $5.5 billion when they went on bended knee (with some cash in-hand) to the FED and asked to be able to get credit for pending transactions. These parodies of oversight roll on and on even today (Sept-2013), earlier this year Regional Financial Corp a company that had failed to pay back their $3.5 billion in TARP loans passed a stress test. Bloomberg View commissioned an analysis and found that Regional was $525 million in the Red. Nevertheless, the banks CEO proclaimed that the stress test demonstrates the strength of our company. Whereas shortly after passing the stress test the bank issued $900 million in stock and said it planned on using the cash to pay back some of the money it had borrowed under TARP. The action described preceding was just one of many shadow games played by the banking industry and the government, Federal and State. Whereas the government uses lies as a form of monetary aid. State hands over TAXPAYER money to a functionally insolvent bank thereby giving the

bank a thumbs up, bank uses the thumbs up to sell stock, bank pays cash back to State whats the big deal the TAXPAYER got his money back yet the entire transaction was based on un-colored bullshit accounting you or I try to pull the same untold years in the slammer. It is through this bullshit accounting that the government has created a vast confidence game through out our entire financial system a Ponzi scam where the value of just about everything is inflated simply because the TAXPAYER through the government will step in to prevent losses. Yet because of two credit card illegal wars, and meddling in other regional conflicts our government is in debt to the tune of $4 to $6 trillion, the hole so deep and will be for years to come now throw in the mismanagement and plain old greed of our financial institutions, totally between the government and our bankers were in debt up to our ears. Common sense and a minute ability to add shows you that there is no-way there is enough capital on-hand for Big Daddy to rescue every Citigroup or Regions Bank should they go bust tomorrow zero, zip, nada. The market seems to behave as if Daddy will step in to once again pay the rent, the next time any or all of the kids sets the couch on fire, and skips our on his security deposit such as a Ponzi scheme, it will only work as long as they dont have to make good on all the promises they made. They are constructing an economy based NOT on real accounting and real numbers, but on BELIEF. And while the signs of growth (which the President of the FED says are happening, while he extends the stimulus) and recovery in this NEW faith-based economy are more than a lie it is a massive pull-thewool-over your eyes once again and one huge promise they made over executive pay was shattered minutes after the first TARP was flushed out of the door of the US Treasury. Recall is was Mr Pudge Larry Summers said to calm the fears of Congress, vowed to limit executive compensation, and to devote public (TAXPAYER) money to prevent another financial crisis. Albeit the exact wording of his promise was true, it was ONLY another trip around the mulberry bush the banksters created more ways to award their executives than an order of French Fries.

One of the well used ways the Banks could and did was to apply to the FED and other regulators in the Government for waivers, which often approved (one senior FDIC official recounts recommending denying a golden parachute payments to Citigroup officials, his recommendation was over ruled by his superiors), or they would apply and receive bailouts through programs other than TARP that did not place limits on bonuses. In one of the most flagrant episodes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paid out more than $200 million in bonuses between 2008 and 2010, even though the firms lost more than $100 billion in 2008, and required nearly $400 billion in Federal assistance during the bailout period in other words they just ignored the promise made to Congress via TARP. Than there was AIG who paid more than $1 million each to 73 employees of AIG FINANCIAL PRODUCTS, the tiny unit widely blamed for having destroyed the insurance giant (some think they triggered the entire financial crisis) with its reckless issuance of nearly a HALF A TRILLION dollars in toxic credit-default swaps they labeled the $1 million payout as retention bonuses after the bailout, which by the way included 11 employees who no longer punched the clock at AIG. Consider the issuance of the long-term restricted stock scam, an investigative team for The New York Times uncovered evidence that showed that five executives at each of the 18 biggest bailout recipients received a total of $142 million in stocks and options pieces of paper that have soared to $457 million, or about $4 million per executive. TARP was not the end I bet good money that youre of the mindset that TARP was the temporary fix put in-place on Wall Street, or that was the end of the TAXPAYER money flush to aid the troubled banks who said they really didnt need the giveaway. Actually the bailout ended up (an is still on-going) than anyone expected growing far beyond TARP to include more obscure and even larger program

such as TALF3, TAF4, PPIP5, and TLGP6. In addition companies like AIG, GM and Citigroup were given tens-of-billions of deferred tax assets, which if you dont know, allows them to carry losses from 2008 forward to offset future profits and keep future tax bills down in the gutter. Keep in mind the cost of the bailouts DO NOT include these on-going giveaways. As inspector Baronfsy said, This is stuff thats never going to appear on any report. Citigroup received more than $50 billion in deferred tax credits, pointing to their super-low tax burden in 2011, actually they received a $144 million credit for that year, then it paid in to its since-ousted wingnut CEO, Vikram Pandit who walked out the door with $14.9 million. The bailout enabled the very banks and financial institutions that cratered the GLOBAL ECONOMY to write off their losses from their toxic deals for years to come further depriving the government of tax revenues revenues that could and would go in helping the homeowners and small businesses who were screwed over by the banks in the first place and funding our failing infrastructure duh, creating jobs! Along with the $700 billion from TARP, one has to look at the $7.7 trillion in secret emergency lending that the FED awarded Wall Street loans that were ONLY disclosed to the TAXPAYER after Congress forced an extraordinary one-time-audit of the Federal Reserve. $7.7 trillion can you imagine? It was until Bloomberg Markets won the right to publish the data from the audit in November 2011, that the TAXPAYERs who read it, saw in detail how the countrys biggest banking firms secretly received trillions in near-free money throughout the crisis (0.01% payback rate), Goldman Sachs, which had made a Big Tent Show of being reluctant in accepting $10 billion in TARP money, was at the head of the secret lowinterest loan program snatching up $34 billion in cash now lets see, you as a TAXPAYER, owning your home want to take out a loan for an extended vacation, at 0.01% per annum can you? Well these banksters did as they
3 4

http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/talf.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_Auction_Facility 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPIP 6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Liquidity_Guarantee_Program

looked down at the very people who made in possible to happen the American TAXPAYER. Michael Duvally of Goldman confirmed that We did not disclose the amount of our participation in the two programs you identify. His boss CEO Blankfein tried to dismiss the importance of the loans by telling the members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that the bank WAS NOT relying on those mechanisms. Yet within his book, Bailout, Inspector Barofsky says that Paulson told him that he believed Morgan Stanley was just days from collapse before the government intervention, while Bernanke later admitted that Goldman would be next to fall. While the leading banks were taking trillions in secret loans from the FED, upper tier officials at the banks were buying up stock in their companies, or twisting the arms of their board members in issuing longterm bonuses in stock. Their stock grab based in insider knowledge not available to the general Public. For instance, Stephen Friedman, Goldman director who was also the Big Boss of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, bought up more that $4 million in Goldman stock over a five-week period in December 2008 and January 2009 years before the extent of the firms lifeline from the FED was made public. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit bought up nearly $7 million in Citi stock in November 2008, while Citi was secretly being loaned (at 0.01%) $99.5 billion, another case of INSIDER TRADING. Chases Jamie pretty boy Dimon, sucked up $11 million in Chase stock in early 2009, while his firm was drawing down $60 billion in secret FED loans, Chase could not point to any disclosure of the banks borrowing from the FED until March in 2010, via a letter from Jamie to the Chase shareholders little delay, and more flagrant INSIDER TRADING. Some questions have risen about the insider trading, whereas the secret loans were subject to the 1989 guideline issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the high-flame disaster labeled the Savings and Loan Crisis, which flatly stated that financial institutions should disclose the NATURE, AMOUNTS AND EFFECTS of any government aid. At the close of 2009 the SEC did in fact fired off letters to Citigroup,

Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo asking them why the DID NOT fully disclose their secret borrowing. All five mega-banks essentially replied go screw yourself, saying that massive borrowing from the FED was not material to the issue, or that the piecemeal disclosure they had submitted was adequate. In other words its none of your business how we run our business never-you-mind that we are using money from a TAXPAYER secured entity. Federal regulators (those who protect the public), in their failing to do their job in more than one sense gave approval to the shenanigans and bullshit of the banksters, whereas instead of chasing POT smoker our esteemed US Attorney General and his boss now walk amongst the well-heeled of our society, They in their screwed up wisdom have given their ok to a program created by the last administration, do you say no? They have decided collectively that the American Public cannot handle the TRUTH. Well there you have it Yes I know that some of you will have made it his far through my narrative might be a bit upset. While I have lifted a great deal of it from an article in the January issue of Rolling Stone, which I doubt many of you dont read my purpose was not originality, but to inform you that havent followed the path of the money into Wall Street. In my feeble attempt to roll back the wool from over your eyes, I noted the move by both administrations to label dying banks healthy, sham stress tests, a turn-a-blind eye to bonus rules, no public disclosure, and the flagrant lack of criminal investigations into the fraud by the bailout recipients before the crash, a condition which as written in the TARP plan was a massive crime in itself, costing the US and the WEST untold trillions. The government on both sides of the aisle constructed wall by wall, statement by statement have spent years pushing a situation that gives Wall Street an IMPLICIT GUARANTEE we will be there for you, (always), no matter how much you screw up, we will lie for you and let you rob from the Public, we will make this on-going bailout a permanent part of the financial system the capper being the government (you the TAXPAYER) will publicly commit to this policy in such an obvious manner that the market will put an exact price tag on the value of our preferred treatment.

Haul out your trusty digital device and add up some numbers: TARP: $700 billion Secret Loan Program: $7.7 trillion Tax deferments: $1.8 trillion Two Credit Cards Wars: $4 6$ trillion Now this very same government has voted to cut food stamps, or infrastructure is in shambles, our schools are a mess, and the country is divided why? Well each side is blaming the other for our national debt in effect the powers-to-be are still doing they job by deflecting the attention from the real criminals the greedy crowd on Wall Street. Albeit the amounts ripped from the TAXPAYER do not equal the values that our infrastructure requires in it getting well they would have accomplished a lot more than being stuffed in a select few institutions we trusted, along with the governments spread across the land and would not have made the United States of America the most hated entity than the church in Rome in its early days.

HAVE A NICE DAY. James L Bradley