Three Card Monte-- How The Banks And The Congressmen They Own Treat Our Money

It's just too simplistic to blame the financial collapse and all the "disappeared" wealth and jobs America experienced under the Bush Regime and in its aftermath on Republicans. The toxic, even pathological, conservative ideology that extols greed and revels in the Law of the Jungle is prevalent on both sides of the aisle even if it only remains unchallenged on one side. In their highly effective campaign to continue using legal cover to rip off the public, the Finance Sector, since 1990, has poured almost $1.4 billion into the campaigns of candidates for federal office. Why do you think they spend so much money... because they're civic-minded? The average Republican House candidate has gotten $128,484 and the average Democrat has gotten $100,501-- more than half a billion dumped into that cesspool. The 10 most devoted slaves to Wall Street interests currently serving in the Senate? Notice that there are criminals wearing both the red and the blue jerseys.

Joe Lieberman (I-CT)- $10,154,592
Arlen Specter (R/D- PA)- $6,486,535
Richard Shelby (R-AL)- $5,303,030
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $5,244,103
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)- $4,931,275
Max Baucus (D-MT)- $4,792,987
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)- $4,697,838
John Cornyn (R-TX)- $4,582,292
Evan Bayh (D-IN)- $4,469,297
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)- $3,848,624

And honorable mentions for sickeningly devoted Wall Street puppets: John Thune (R-SD- $3,755,561), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA- $3,710,806), Tim Johnson (D-SD- $3,135,515), Bob Corker (R-TN- $3,135,180), Richard "Bank Run" Burr (R-NC- $2,922,171), Ben Nelson (D-NE- $2,839,056), Chuck Grassley (R-IA- $2,612,899), Jim DeMint (R-SC- $2,501,810), Mary Landrieu (D-LA- $2,489,984), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR- $2,450,292) and Robert Bennett (R-UT- $2,412,367). All of the above senators serve Wall Street absolutely and their constituents come last. If every one of them, regardless of party, were removed from office, America would immediately be on a much sounder financial footing. Harry Reid is not incorrect in calling out McConnell as a pawn of Wall Street, but why should anyone listen when he's also cynically supporting Arlen Specter's and Blanche Lincoln's re-election bids?

Yesterday Economics and Law Professor Bill Black, the former spectacularly successful Litigation Director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, testified in front of the House Financial Services Committee. His testimony was absolutely chilling even if callow bankster puppet Paul Kanjorski cut him short with a gavel that should have been used to beat the $3,748,391 in barely disguised bribes he's taken from the Financial Sector out of him. It's very much worthwhile reading the full transcript of his testimony and watching the video (below). A few sections that got my blood boiling, even if it left Kanjorski nonplused:

Lehman’s failure is a story in large part of fraud. And it is fraud that begins at the absolute latest in 2001, and that is with their subprime and liars’ loan operations.

Lehman was the leading purveyor of liars’ loans in the world. For most of this decade, studies of liars’ loans show incidence of fraud of 90%. Lehmans sold this to the world, with reps and warranties that there were no such frauds. If you want to know why we have a global crisis, in large part it is before you. But it hasn’t been discussed today, amazingly.

Financial institution leaders are not engaged in risk when they engage in liars’ loans-- liars’ loans will cause a failure. They lose money. The only way to make money is to deceive others by selling bad paper, and that will eventually lead to liability and failure as well.

When people cheat you cannot as a regulator continue business as usual. They go into a different category and you must act completely differently as a regulator. What we’ve gotten instead are sad excuses.

The SEC: we’re told they’re only 24 people in their comprehensive program. Who decided how many people there would be in their comprehensive program? Who decided the staffing? The SEC did. To say that we only had 24 people is not to create an excuse-- it’s to give an admission of criminal negligence. Except it’s not criminal, because you’re a federal employee.

...[E]very day that Lehman remained under its leadership, the exposure of the American people to loss grew by hundreds of millions of dollars on average. Auroroa was pumping out up to 30 billion dollars a month in liars’ loans. Losses on those are running roughly 50% to 85 cents on the dollar. It is critical not to do business as usual, to change.

We’ve also heard from Secretary Geithner and Chairman Bernanke-- we couldn’t deal with these lenders because we had no authority over them. The Fed had unique authority since 1994 under HOEPA to regulate all mortgage lenders. It finally used it in 2008.

They could’ve stopped Aurora. They could’ve stopped the subprime unit of Lehman that was really a liar’s loan place as well as time went by.

This will continue as long as there is no effective accountability. These corporate criminals and the politicians who enable them laugh out public outrage. One of the worst of the Bush economic team, Wall Street darling Rob Portman has the gumption to actually be running for the open Ohio Senate seat-- instead of spending his energy trying to keep his ass out of prison.