Outrageous - Taxpayers Bail Out Bear Stearns; JP Morgan Buys for $2 / Share
In the past 72 hours, the ultimate financial scam has been perpetrated on the American public. On Friday, the Federal Reserve back-doored a loan to an investment banking firm. And today, a bank bought the investment banking firm for pennies on the dollar - all largely subsidized by you, the taxpayer.
A couple of months back, I wrote the following:
The unprecedented wealth transfer from poor and middle income families to the uber rich is nearly complete. The folks at the bottom of the GOP-led financial pyramid scheme are nearly bled dry, and the pyramid is about to collapse. To sustain itself a little longer, the folks at the top of the pyramid will have to start an Amway-style ritual of financial cannibalism amongst themselves. I think that (to an extent) this is exactly what we’re seeing in the stock markets and big financial houses as the true meltdown begins…
On Friday, it was announced that JP Morgan Chase Bank was acting as an intermediary to bail out the financial investment bank Bear Stearns, and essentially funneled billions of dollars from the U.S. Federal Reserve (read: you and me) to those who had entrusted their investment fortunes to Bear Sterns.
I don’t even know where to start on this one. How about here?
www.waronyou.com
Hey I run WARONYOU.COM,
It all about news. Im just a another concerned citizen. I like to write and discuss news in forums. Viral video is fun.
Congress (somebody) needs to punch their ticket -- no more Free rides. No bail-outs by the Fed (the Fed is illegal and needs to be shut down -- immediately). Taxpayers should stop paying taxes until this kind of egregious BS behavior is stopped, No? WTF!
These financial firms NEED to collapse because of their own disenguous ways and disappear. Pull your funds OUT of the Market and Banks and buy metals. Let these carnivores eat each other...
by
boomerang (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 237 comments)
on Monday, March 17, 2008 at 1:02:48 PM
when he said they were taking "measures" to fix the economy.
It's over folks. We had a good ride for two hundred years but it's time to pay the fiddler and he don't take credit. The tail-spin we're about to experience we will not be able to pull out of.
Oh, after the food riots and Marshall Law has been declared the powers-that-be will pull out their AMERO as the cure all for what ails us and of course this new currency can only be exchanged through a government issued ID Card, but don't worry about that, just line up, turn around and bend over for your micro-chip shot.
It's over folks. The Grand Experiment has been laid to rest by those pathological sociopaths that infested every level of our government. Enjoy what time you have left for we don't have much time at all.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1256 comments)
on Monday, March 17, 2008 at 1:09:44 PM
such a pessimist, I just hope you are wrong, tho I fear otherwise. However, we must keep on keepin' on for as long as possible in hopes of changing the outcome, no?
Is there not enuf left of the spirit of the founding daddy dudes?
Hey, after listening to the testimony of those brave damaged patriots from "winter soldier" this past weekend, I have got to believe in hope. It may be that a sudden flood of awareness is about to take place. That is my hope. Or, it could certainly happen as you say....let's try not to allow it!
And by the way, who gives a fragrant steamy log what bush means about anything? He puts the "more" in moron.
In solidarity, mickyg
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Micheal Gilfillan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 12:15:36 AM
Amusingly, as I write, the US stock market is actually UP!
There is something deeply obscene about this, as if the sharpies on Wall Street are laughing at all the rubes they've just swindled. (That would be you and me, Mr & Ms Taxpayer.)
The dollar is collapsing, and a major Wall St bank just went under -- a bank that Wall St, in its infinite wisdom, had valued at $57 per share on Thursday, but has seen fit to sell at $2 per share, today. This would be the same Wall St that has gotten Congress to remove all effective oversight from its shenanigans, in the past decade or so. And the same Wall St that has now arranged for "We, the People" to have to pay the price for any & all adverse consequences of said shenanigans. These guys play "Heads We Win, Tails You Lose" every day of the week.
So today, the stock market surveys the entire scene, and judges that this is a reason for stocks to go UP! The DJIA is up over 100 points at this moment -- a nice gain, considering that on the objective merits, it should probably be down by a few thousand. The new "financial engineering" has apparently gotten so sophisticated that market crashes are now "quaint and obsolete." The market does what its masters want it to do -- all correlation to economic reality has been severed.
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Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1120 comments)
on Monday, March 17, 2008 at 2:36:07 PM
As hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their homes their government does nothing. Wall Street ends the day on a positive note after every single major stock index around the globe ends down because the government will bail them out with tax dollars. Aren't these the same markets that George W. Bush wants Americans to invest their retirement acounts in? So he can trash and eliminate Social Security just as he has trashed our Nation over the past eight years.
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Constance Lavender (47 articles, 0 quicklinks, 73 diaries, 167 comments)
on Monday, March 17, 2008 at 3:00:41 PM
...but, they will soon. Here is another link. Please take a few minutes, watch and listen to this video: Bear Stearns, Jim Cramer, The Federal Reserve, JPMorgan. This one fellow is angry, but many more Americans need to get angry before anything meaningful will be done about this Sh**.
I suppose I'm part of too small a minority on this point to change many minds, but this monetary/banking system we have is more like simple theft by a shadow goverment than it is welfare, and Ellen Brown has it correct when she says the public are in debt peonage to the banks.
The Colonies rebelled against England in part because of its debt peonage system, and now that is exactly what we have, courtesy of the Fed. They paid a heavy price for their freedom and most likely we will too, if we truly desire our freedom again.
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Paul Rye (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 253 comments)
on Monday, March 17, 2008 at 6:26:22 PM
The crime, "The unprecedented wealth transfer from poor and middle income families to the uber rich" and they not only have gotten away with it - they make the middle class and poor feel like if they only pulled themselves up by their boot straps. It makes me so ANGRY.
The deregulated banking industry let the sharks lose on the people and the succeeded in sucking every current and future dime out of the economy. We have not seen the last of this mess.
As the economy contracts, and what is left of the real employers continue to contract as demand contracts, even more foreclosures will be on the horizon.
The bankruptcy laws have been tightened, so even though Morgan Chase has been handed $30 plus billion, joe average that defaults on a credit card will be sentanced to a perpetual life of high interest, poor credit and endless collection calls.
Forget about college educations, health care, infrastructure.
And just why do we continue to take it and where are the Presidential candidates. More economic bailouts for the wealthy?
We have only seen the tip of the collapsing US dollar - what will it look like when China refuses to subsidize any more imports and Saudi Arabia dumbs their $Trillion dollar holdings?
Last one out of the dollar has a worthless piece of green currency...
Now what?
by
August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 430 comments)
on Monday, March 17, 2008 at 8:59:02 PM
BSC's CEO says on Tuesday everything is fine, the Fed announces new measures to provide liquidity but does not provide it puzzling many people, then someone takes out 55,000 PUT contracts betting BSC stock price will drop from 65 to 30 in 10 days, followed by rumours BSC is having problems, stock price falls to 30 by Friday at which time the PUTS are executed and profits pocketed, which we now know happens to be BSC's last day of being traded, and then Sunday it is announced JPM is buying BSC for 2 dollars a share, giving them the company for 10 cents on the dollar, ruining it's shareholder who are largely employees and it's pension fund, while the Fed absorbs the risks with the new liquidity measures they announced Tuesday. JPM is of course a major shareholder of the Fed and is the big winner.
Spitzer would have been all over this one. It reeks of fraud and insider trading, and you know SEC will do nothing. So he had to be taken out.
As for the state of the economy, check this out. 3rd world here we come.
And the American people sit idly by, with an occasional peep and sigh.
Isn't it interesting the timing of Eliot Spitzer's ouster? The predatory lending scandal was in disarray, and it is appears Spitzer was the fly in the ointment.
These are the people who kept telling us that they are worth four hundred times what their employees are. They had the wisdom and responsibility to make the big decisions as no one else could.
Enron
Global Crossing
Worldcom
Citicorp
Chase
Merrill Lynch
Carlyle Capital
Bear Stearns
Riding the Bubble
The Tip of the Iceberg
My fondest desire is to see grey haired men in suits, wandering the Hamptons whispering wide eyed, Joel Haley Osment-like, "I see poor people!"
But right now, here in the heartland I can hear them praying in unison, "Holy Mammon, please protect me from free markets and alert taxpayers."
by
John Sanchez Jr. (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 8 diaries, 1055 comments)
on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 12:04:36 AM
I heard on the Newshour last night that the building Bear Stearns was housed in is worth more than what Morgan/Chase paid for the company. How funny is that? One of the economists on the panel responded that the building must have some encumbrances on it, or the transaction would have made no sense at all. Even funnier.
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Gregg Gordon (26 articles, 47 quicklinks, 15 diaries, 199 comments)
on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 5:57:52 AM
“Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”
“If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” -Andrew Jackson
“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government’s greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles… the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.” -Abraham Lincoln
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs-Thomas Jefferson
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”
-James Madison
by
Better World Order (4 articles, 408 quicklinks, 26 diaries, 875 comments)
on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 10:00:58 AM
