Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Enron's shadows, and Obama's clowns and doofuses
The Enron swindle foreshadowed the destruction of America's investment banks, money center banks and brokerages. In fact, the leniency shown by the Bush Regime to the malefactors -- and virtually every major financial institution was invested or implicated, directly or indirectly in Enron -- was a direct cause of the recent crises, both with real estate, bonds, and stocks. By allowing those who knew about, promoted and knowingly invested in Enron's off balance sheet entities to get away with miniscule financial penalties, these corporations were emboldened to double down. This is the very essence of "moral hazard".
And now they're getting off easy AGAIN. With more of your tax monies!@#$ If there is one bright spot, it is that their stock share prices have been obliterated: 2 yr chart: wm+c+axp+jpm+bac+fre+fnm+aig+ge I particularly relish the chart for Citibank, though the Bank of Fascism chart is also delicious. (This is the schadenfreude squared.) If you recall the energy "crisis" of 2001, when Enron was manipulating the unregulated price of electricity and bankrupting California while the Bush Regime chortled about teabagging California governor Davis -- later recalled -- then the current "crisis" makes perfect sense to you now. Rich corporations went crazy manipulating the prices of unregulated derivatives and securities while avoiding any real oversight from the Federal government. Deregulation did not begin with Comrade Bush but he certainly finished it. Now the perps are receiving trillions in government welfare, and many of them are still bankrupt, even after all that has been given them. They're being sucked into the black holes of unregulated derivatives contracts which they themselves wrote. And few people are willing to "invest" with them now because they refused to create an open, regulated marketplace for these securities which would have established fair market values for everyone to see. They wanted to profit from both sides of every trade by keeping outsiders ignorant. Now they are "hoisted on their own petard." What I really like about this also is companies like GE, which are deep into the business of charging usurious interest rates to sick people. Doctors and dentists don't give patients time to pay off their bills these days. What they do instead is refer them to a company like GE, which pays the doctor upfront and charges patients at least 10% interest...assuming the patients have good credit scores. So...to see GE crushed by their own greed is one of the greatest sight I hope to ever see! Too bad about all of the widows and orphans who invested their life savings in GE, Citibank and Bank of Fascism. Remember this when you see the new Bank of Fascism ads on TV! But of course, the incompetence and corruption won't end in D.C. any time soon. They protect each other. Like this Tim Geithner, who was nominated by Obama as Treasury Secretary. Not only was Geithner "in on" the most recent disasters as head of the New York Federal Reserve, but he stiffed the US for taxes knowingly.
Now you tell me if it is credible that a man in his position could be unaware of his obligation to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Anyone who has been either self-employed or an employee should know all about this. And are we to assume that Geithner's tax accountant was also ignorant? More troubling is that Barack Obama's team was aware of this problem and nominated Geithner anyway! They don't feel that credibility is important? This looks like an ominous pattern with the disastrous young Obama presidency: he has appointed a cadre of bumbling apparatchiks to surround him. Supposedly he wants to surround himself with a diversity of opinions, but from what I have seen he has a room full of clowns and doofuses. © by the author.
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