Well and Truly Fucked
Many of us on the left (and those on the right who haven’t had their heads up their asses) have been talking about the economic downturn and the numerous facets that it has had. The housing downturn that foreshadowed the mortgage crisis (that we’ve been talking about for over a year now), the markets falling to pieces, the collapse of Bear Stearns, and now Freddie, Fannie, Lehman and AIG. Smaller banks have been failing, too, though not getting the attention that these ginormous businesses have.
And so here we are, on the edge of handing a $700 billion blank check to Hank Paulson to give to all his investment bank CEO chums. Paulson, remember, was CEO of Goldman Sachs. He’s hardly a disinterested individual.
When Chairman Chris Cox of the SEC and Sec. Paulson approached the Congressional leadership this week, hat in hand, it’s interesting that the Congress gave them the time of day. After all, it’s under Paulson’s watch at Treasury that the investment markets, after gorging themselves silly on sub-prime mortgages, started to lose money hand over fist until there was no more money to lose. Bear gone in a fire sale to JP Morgan, ML gone to Bank of America, Lehman without even that much of a chance, and billions of dollars in bail outs to Fannie, Freddie and AIG. Hank Paulson needs to pay us back for this one.
But instead, what he requested was a $700 billion tab that he could run up to keep the markets afloat, with no oversight and no accountability. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
Thankfully it looks like some members of Congress are as unhappy about the idea as I am.
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