Organized Crime and Government

I’ve been thinking a lot about the economic crisis. It has damaged the security of our Country and has hurt so many innocent people. The people on Wall St. and their conspirators in government have caused this country more damage than Al Qaeda. I agree with President Obama that we have to focus on solving the crisis. But solving the crisis means identifying what criminals did what to cause the damage. People are outraged that the same people at AIG that caused the problem got bonuses. What about the outrage that the same people in government who conspired with them are now in charge of solving the problem?

The worst economic crisis since the “Great Depression” was primarily the result of three government actions. First, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and hundreds of post Depression regulations that then allowed Wall St. investment firms to compete with Banks. Second, the derivatives market was exempted from regulatory control. This allowed Wall St. to create derivatives and then criminally over-leveraged them to cause the whole house of cards to collapse. Third, Wall St. was allowed to carry off-balance sheet accounting and to use “self-policing” to regulate that market. This allowed Wall St. to hide overleveraged phony derivatives from regulators, if they ever decided to look.

It is certain that the present economic crisis is due primarily to the deregulation of Wall St. and the failure to regulate derivatives. It is just as certain that some people on Wall St. are making a lot of money with the tax-payer bailouts. So if we follow the old adage “follow the money”, what do we get? Why did some Wall St. firms get bailed out and not others? Why was AIG allowed to keep bonuses and launder money to Goldman-Sachs, Citigroup and UBS? The map of key players reads like an old Mafia organization map, tracing connections between Wall St. and Government. This is the organization that stole our savings and is stealing our tax dollars now:

Robert Rubin (AKA “The Accountant”): Former executive with Goldman-Sachs and 70th Secretary of the Treasury. He spearheaded the Clinton Administration effort to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act and exempt derivatives. He now works for Citigroup.

Larry Summers (AKA “The Apprentice”): Currently the Chief Economic Advisor to the President, former 71st Secretary of the Treasury and former assistant to Robert Rubin. He assured that derivatives would be exempted from regulations and was a big proponent of allowing Wall St. to “self-regulate”.

Henry Paulson (AKA “The Don”): the power behind the organization. He was the former CEO of Goldman-Sachs and 74th Secretary of Treasury. He organized and coordinated the government response to the Wall St. bailouts with Goldman-Sachs. He made the decisions on who got money and who didn’t. For example, when Lehman Brothers and AIG requested bailouts, Paulson had a “sit down” with current Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein in late Sept. 2008 and decided to let Sachs competitor Lehman Brothers fail, but bail out AIG. Who was AIG’s biggest trading partner? Goldman-Sachs. Too bad you Lehman Brothers, Bear-Stearns investors backed the wrong horse. Maybe you should pay more attention to who is in government than your portfolio. Paulson runs the organization now through his positions on the Boards of TARP and FSOB.

Tim Geithner (AKA “Babyface”): Former assistant to Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and now the 75th Secretary of Treasury. He helped Rubin and Summers destroy the regulation of Wall St. and exemption of derivatives. Recommended by “the Don” Paulson, he is now in charge of making sure the organization takes care of it’s own. Just to be sure, his Chief of Staff is Mark Patterson, formerly of Goldman-Sachs. Patterson strong armed Sen. Dodd into taking out the restrictions on bonuses to AIG and allowed AIG to pay-off lenders at full price such as Goldman-Sachs

Ben Bernanke (AKA “The Banker”): Chair of the Federal Reserve. He withdrew the money and put it into TARP to pay off, sorry, “bail out” Wall St. firms such as Sachs and Citigroup at the recommendation of Paulson. He appointed Neel Kahkari, formerly V.P. of (you guessed it) Goldman-Sachs to head TARP. He negotiated the deal to save AIG and allowed all initial TARP money to be given to Wall St. without conditions.

Sen. Phil Gramm (AKA “The Assassin”): Along with Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, he spearheaded the Senate legislation to kill Glass-Steagall, regulations on trade and accounting and exempt derivatives. While Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee he exacted over 3 billion dollars of contributions to allies in the Government from Wall St. He was in a position to take over as “Don” but failed in the 2008 election. He has since become a lobbyist for… UBS, one of the firms AIG laundered TARP money to pay off.

So can we trust the same men in government who caused the economic crisis (by enabling Wall St.’s thefts of our future) to make sure our money now goes to solve the problem? Or can we expect that they will enrich the same people who stole our money with our tax dollars? Is it any wonder why Goldman-Sachs is now “whole” and has fewer competitors? Is it any wonder why we can’t account for hundreds of billions of tax dollars already given to Goldman-Sachs, Citigroup and AIG?

Is it time to realize that we are being robbed by a conspiracy that reaches from Goldman-Sachs to the Obama Administration to AIG and back again when the next round of pay-offs, I mean bail-outs occur.