Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Shalom Bernanke "I’m a college professor. I never worked on Wall Street. My interest is solely for the strength and recovery of the U.S. economy. I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost; the unemployment rate will rise; more houses will be foreclosed upon; GDP will contract; that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way, no matter what other policies are taken."
Barney Frank, D–Mass., Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee "It would be a grave mistake to say that we’re going to buy up the bad debt that results from the bad decisions of these people and then allow them to get millions of dollars on the way out the door. The American people don’t want that to happen, and it shouldn’t happen."
(Regarding the partisan battle brewing over the bankruptcy provision for homeowners’ mortgage payments—a rally point for Democrats, Frank said), "We’ll see how hard they fight. It’s something we care about."
Obviously, the economic crisis we are facing pales in comparison to our leadership crisis....
Regarding how fundamentally sound our economy was just weeks ago: our leaders are implying that they were either too stupid to know what has been building up for years, or they are liars. Certainly, any pleas of stupidity remain solidly backed up by actions. But even more fundamentally, these people are liars, always have been, always will be. And now they expect to be believed when pleading for a trillion dollars more so everything will resolve itself in the financial markets?—so your retirement funds won’t simply go pppffftt!
Remember the trillion-plus taxpayer dollars that went pppffftt! in the "Savings and Loan Crisis" about twenty years ago?
Remember, since then, the trillion-plus taxpayer dollars in the "Tech Stock Bubble"—pppffftt!
And now, essentially the same species of greed and deregulation has us in today’s "Credit Crisis".
Point person in this new orgy of taxpayer bloodletting, Secretary Paulson—the man who last week got down on one knee in front of Nancy Pelosi to beg her not to "blow up" the bailout deal by withdrawing Democratic support...what about his trustworthiness?
Before becoming Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson was Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs for 8 years, where he pulled down a paltry $1.5 million—a month! Goldman Sachs was the country’s biggest investment bank before the recent takeover (and is suddenly doing much better thanks to Paulson’s "intervention"). While commanding Goldman Sachs, Paulson was deeply involved in creating exactly the kind of "toxic waste" that now has the financial markets melting down. With this in mind, consider again the awesome hypocrisy in Paulson’s statements last week:
"I’m not only concerned, I’m angry about the things that got us here. It makes me angry, and it makes you angry. You talk about taxpayers being on the hook? Guess what? They’re already on the hook. If the system isn’t stabilized, they’re going to bear the cost."
And.
"The American people are angry about executive compensation, and rightfully so. We must find a way to address this in the legislation."
Also, in Paulson’s acknowledgement of "‘excesses’ in executive compensation"—while saying debate on that should be put off for another time, because..."If we design it (the Bailout) so it’s punitive and so institutions aren’t going to participate, this won’t work the way we need it to work"...do you sense any trustworthiness?
Tiberious Caesar once said, "I want my sheep shorn, not shaven."
Obviously, our corporate government wants the American flock skinned...at least.
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