Bloomberg News has researched a bombshell story, the Federal Reserve gave $1.2 trillion in secret loans to banks during the financial crisis, from August 2007 until April 2010. This is in addition to the TARP bail outs which was publicly known.
The $1.2 trillion peak on Dec. 5, 2008 -- the combined outstanding balance under the seven programs tallied by Bloomberg -- was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and more than the total earnings of all federally insured banks in the U.S. for the decade through 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The top three banks at peaking borrowing are: Morgan Stanley, $107.3 billion, Citigroup took $99.5 billion, Bank of America $91.4 billion, or a total of $298.2 billion. Gets worse, foreign banks amounted to half the loans.
Half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.
Bloomberg had filed a Freedom of Information act in 2008 to find out the details on these loans. They finally won to be presented with 21,000 transactions and massive amounts of data to crunch. The above article overviews the results of their long battle and investigation. They have created a website with interactive data from their research results. Below is one image from Bloomberg's Data Presentation Site:
The below Bloomberg interview is where Robert Litan calls the TBTF banks Aristocracy, as if borrowing money on incredible terms, making fast profits on carry trade or any other fast buck scheme is a way to prop up anything. He's right though, it's an astounding amount of money to keep these crappy institutions afloat.
Think about it, while people are foreclosed on with no help in sight and none reall to this day, we had another secret bailout happening to the tune of $1.2 trillion, with half of it bailing out banks not even incorporated in this nation.
Bloomberg did a lot of work for this story and corresponding research, so to really get the details click anyone of the links above.
Comments
Exhausted!
I know this is news, but is there anyone who is not exhausted with this story? Better yet, is there anyone who thinks this will change the dynamics....at all? I know and You know, plutocrats One gazillion and labor -15 trillion with interest and late fees. I don't advocate violence but, is there any other solution to this theft? At the very least a vote of confidence on the entire gooberment, rather than another fraudulent election.
Odin
The Cultism of the Radical Right plus what to do
The never ending stream of are you kidding me???? bogus economic actions, policy, corporate lobbyist, Wall Street, globalist agenda cloaked in economic fictional white paper ramblings keeps us up and running 24/7!
Look at Bloomberg. They had to sift through 29k+ pages of transactions to tabulate this all out, after something like 3 years fighting the Fed to get the data even released to put together the aggregate data and corresponding story. That, my friends is not a volunteer effort and why we need paid press.
Dr. Doom Roubini is predicting social unrest will spread.
But we have an additional problem here, in the U.S. are "strong forces" for "economic creationism" and this psychos are busy mixing religious fundamentalism with insane economic agendas, such as "free markets solve everything" and "destroy social safety nets at all costs"....
and they get their flock to be mesmerized with their economic fiction as much as they pray to Jesus. It's no joke as we see by the GOP Presidential field.
Then, on the other side, we have pure corporate lobbyists and Wall Street running the White House as well as most of Democrats.
Pretty astounding these economic creationists if you think about it, True Christianity was interested in social equality and helping the poor, the under trodden. Not this new bunch, I think of them as Economic Nazis. I'm sorry, yes that's a harsh analogy and over used, but they scare the crap out of me because the U.S. economy as it is is on the brink, and that brink is caused by corporate lobbyists and their globalization agenda, with a sprinkling of absurd special interest groups....
So, what to do? This site will not under any circumstances advocate violence or any such stuff, so I guess the Ratigan constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics completely seems like a good start.
But this cultism of the radical right is downright scary and reminds me so much of how the Nazis mesmerized the nation and got into power in so many ways.
Thank you for your work EP. I
Thank you for your work EP. I owe you and I know it. How about next Tuesday.
Odin
Here is some Bob Dylan.
Hezekiah Jones by Dylan....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AicfqEyOHvc...... Sorry if I am not supposed to post links I never read the rules.
[RO] edited to display the link for your enjoyment and as an example to display media in comments
Odin
site rules, links and stuff and thank you very much!
There is a user guide over on the right hand side and an admin forum. The rules are basically don't break the site and check your HTML/XHTML code. Get enough errors it can screw up the layout, but it really matters when authoring, the comments are "isolated" more in this regard. Then, the site does have a host of scripts to check for errors and limits, strippers and so on to keep out funky and worse stuff, but I can't catch everything.
Other than that, we LOVE graphs and youtubes. Just pick a smaller display window to fit in the comment box and you're good.
We have the ability to display images, scale them, any media, mathematical equations and even a little graphing of data from posts. If it works, has small server load, can display with fast page load and people want something, I'm game to add it.
anything that turns numbers into concepts and more absorbed information I'm into. The biggest crime on EP is to write economic fiction (on purpose, as an agenda).
More data and facts the better and thank you very much! I have no idea why I keep up this site, beyond I just get so into the data and facts myself, so they are almost like my own exploratory notes in a lot of ways, thoughts.
But it's a ton of work so glad folks appreciate the effort!
Not a tough call at this point
I believe that sixty years of global social instability was predicted by Columbia University sociologist 'Dr. World System' Immanuel Wallerstein at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre even before the events of 9/11/2001. (Wallerstein is primary developer of World System Analysis school of sociology and history and a critic of the WTO world system.)
Breaking Point
I waver between thinking things are so bad now that my countrymen and women can't do otherwise than solve problems through demanding campaign finance reform and the separation of corporation and state (meaning OK, no corporate tax; but in exchange no give-outs, no market distortions, no lobbying, and we stick to defending our human electorate) and listening to the man or woman on the street exclaim over some petty moral issue on either side of the fence. I wish I knew which way this would go - it's the uncertainty that's killing me.
Do you remember my post from 2008?
Dr Crane Brinton's method layed out the warning signs.
I borrowed his analysis and applied it to America in 2008 and came up with the warning signs: economic crisis, treason of the intellectuals (netroots, bloggers), military misadventures, social class stratification, incompetence of the ruling classes,
and most important, popular distrust of the doomed regime.
When did the waring sign events occur and re-occur?
The 4 major revolutions of the last 4 hundred years:
Britain, US, France and Russia. It is important that
Roubini is figuring this out as well.
The Arab Spring is an easy one using "Anatomy of Revolution". If you apply it the First World, they will laugh at you, or claim your method is old. I respond that History is History and Brinton is a world class Historian.
Burton Leed
link to your content
If you click on your user name and go to "content created", there is a workspace of everything. here is you.
Maybe I need to create another space for people to start threads and so on for discussion.
The problem is EP is now a news source, cited and as a result articles must be professionally cited as well as formatting has become critical.
I'll have to think about how to set this up so EP remains a news source, but people can also contribute, write and don't have to worry so much about formatting and professional Journalistic standards.
EP is great, stick with it
Thanks for all of it. EP as a news source is worth a lot.
How About "Diaries"?
I have seen them used at other websites -- and I bet you have too -- where site members are allowed to put up posts on their own called "Diaries."
It's always been clear to me at those sites what's been written by the site's own writers and what is a diary by am Average-Joe, nonprofessional member.
As long as such distinctions were made and were obvious, that might be the solution you seek.
somethin'
I'll have to do some major code architecture changes so I have to think about how to put this together. Does seem we need a "3rd" new level, but I'm going to have to add additional code and other things to make sure someone's "diary" can't post if it's not properly formatted for one. DK has that and to write it, my hats off to them, not easy. I'll have to limit the capabilities...
anyway, I'm rambling but I'll see what to do architecturally and code wise to make something like this happen.
At the moment, comments actually have their own RSS feed and they do map back to each registered user so one can track each registered users comments if they want.
Links for Brinton
Free full text at Internet Archive of Brinton's A History of Western Morals
Also, brief Wikipedia article, Crane_Brinton
The World Is Just Too Damn Big!
I guess I've been reading too much of de Toqueville and Theory of Mass Society literature (an occupational hazard of old age). Then I look at secret 1.2 Trillion loans by "civil servants" at the Fed, plus a president I voted for waging a war for which he did not have funds appropriated under the guise of an organization that was created to stop the Soviet Union's expansion into Europe back in the 1940s. People point to the Constitutional authority of Congress, the anti-deficiency act, and the war powers act, and the Administration stares back and asks "Whatcha gonna do about it? We got our appropriation and we will reprogram funds now (even if the law says we can't) and you will have no choice but to make us whole later." Not even the Tea Party has the stomach to say "impeachment" -- that might upset the markets and bring on a recession worse than the one we are now skating above. A private, for-profit corporation that can't do math is caled an "agency" and nobody goes to jail for massive corporate fraud in the mortgage mess. Instead, the financial elite Fed and Treasury arrange a no-fault solution and the middle class crumbles while the banksters pretend that those delinquent mortgages are worth 100 cents on the dollar plus interest and fees. Who are we to demand accountability when the UN is now telling heads of state to step down in the interest of a larger, cleaner world order in which he likes of DSK dictate the terms of our daily lives? NAFTA? WTO? Megastate? You ain't seen nothin yet.
Frank T.
we need a Presidential Democratic primary challenge
Let's face it, this is the war between the radical religious right donors and the multinational corporate, military-industrial complex class. Assuredly not an election for little ole' American citizens.
Someone needs to break ranks, tradition and run against Obama in the Democratic primary. Alternatively, someone who can get the funding of the few super rich left with a conscience, to run as an independent. To run as an independent means they have to get on the ballot in all 50 states and that is wrought with political lockdowns so an ind. cannot get on the ballot. Ask Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan about that one.
States and congressional districts
Voting and election reform can only be done state-by-state.
Congressional seats can be won for reform only congressional-district by congressional-district.
At the crucial and often overlooked vote-counting level, precinct (and up to county elections) workers or volunteers are of tremendous importance.
IMO, we need to give far less attention to the presidential circus and focus much more than we do on Congress. That strategy seems to have paid off for the Tea Party in 2010. Before Lincoln won, there were a number of Republicans in Congress.
Why not think outside the Money Party (whether Democrats or Republicans) and consider voting for candidates in any other party? We have three relatively good alternatives -- Libertarian, Green, Socialist -- there's some real choice for you! Take your pick!
Slogan for voting outside the two parties in 2012? "DON'T WASTE YOUR VOTE!"
Kucinich campaigns in Seattle
Dennis Kucinich is officially campaigning as usual for his long-held seat in the US House representing Ohio's 10th Congressional district. But there are two or three notes of cognitive dissonance in that ...
1. Dennis' district is being carved up with the rest of Ohio by a Republican machine which will design things such that Kucinich will be in a very difficult position to run for Congress in 2012. 2011 will see the end of Ohio's 10th as we know it. (Four of the five members of the Ohio Apportionment Board, beginning their proceedings just this month, are Republican politicians, and the RNC has been targeting Dennis since he first won a seat in the US House.)
2. Dennis is currently receiving national media attention as "campaigning in Washington (the state of Washington).
3. Dennis is gaining attention by way of speaking at the Seattle HempFest! (Kucinich will not run against former colleagues who represent Cleveland, but the greater Cleveland area is destined to have two rather than three districts because of loss of population. Therefore, Dennis -- who has announced that he is going to run for Congress somewhere in 2012 -- will likely have to run in a socially conservative area.)
YouTube video (MOX News)
So far, Kucinich is on record (since late 2008) that he will not run for president again.
But what is he doing? I don't know enough about either Ohio redistricting or Washington election law to make anything like a prediction as to what Dennis Kucinich will do in 2012. I do know that he is an exceedingly savvy politician and even a statesman of national stature. He is also the Devil Incarnate to the RNC and the rest of the Money Party. He is viewed as suspect by the DNC, for having taking stands against party leadership on numerous occasions.
(Kucinich carries a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution wherever he goes. He is also righteously law-abiding in all respects, especially campaign-finance law, and he is notoriously tight with campaign funds, ruthlessly depending on unpaid volunteers.)
One oft-mentioned possibility that I rate as very unlikely is a Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich independent ticket. The only reason anyone thinks that could happen is that Kucinich and Paul vote alike on some issues, especially constitutional issues such as war authorization. Both are among the very few in Congress who dare to criticize not only the current Fed, but the Fed system itself. While both suggest radical reform of the monetary system, their suggested reforms are radically opposed. Paul is of the von Mises Institute persuasion and Kucinich is allied with the American Monetary Institute -- that's like ice and fire, not particularly compatible. But anything is possible.
Text of speech, with link to video, at kucinich.us
someone electable
Most of the time Kucinich is right on but he has some serious bad ideas that would guarantee a loss.
Someone like Byron Dorgan or Jim Webb, these people appeal to all sides, and they often have common sense attitudes. Dorgan especially has some strong economics on his side.
I honestly think Bernie Sanders could even win. He's take that socialist attack and say "oh yeah, so...have you been to Canada, Sweden, France and seen how good they have it?"
Expect the unexpected
How did 2011 become an election year? It's actually a redistricting and apportionment year!
Robert Oak:
You specify "someone electable" respecting call for a Democratic challenger ... yeah, that's okay, but it's 2011 and I am reporting on Kucinich not as a presidential challenger (he has by no means announced for the presidency) but as a sign of what 2012 may bring. Kucinich announcing for president in the Democratic Party would have the effect of throwing open the nomination process, at least to a much greater extent than it now is.
Anyway, I am of the "expect the unexpected" school of thought.
"Most of the time Kucinich is right on but he has some serious bad ideas that would guarantee a loss." -- Robert Oak
About "serious bad ideas" ... hmmm. Are you pointing at the American Monetary Institute and Kucinich's Monetary Reform Bill? ... or his National Emergency Employment Defense Act? ... but I think those are good ideas that might have a broad appeal in 2012. Or maybe you're just noting that it looks like he favors decriminalization of marijuana
.... but there, probably half the people of California agree with him, as does Jimmy Carter
Of course, Dorgan, Webb or Sanders would all make great candidates and maybe even great presidents. But it seems unlikely that any of them will run in the Democratic primaries in 2012, although such would be less unlikely if Kucinich announces.
Agreed -- But Who?
Is it possible there's somebody out there we don't know about or haven't thought of who'd be willing to make a run? Such a person would have to be more than willing of course. They'd also have to be able to survive the scrutiny and strain of a presidential campaign and get the money necessary to compete.
What a tall order!
Anybody who's a smart and not in the hip pocket of big donors is probably too sane to run.
Correct me if I'm wrong but does any other country have an election anything like our presidential election, in terms of money required and a year of craziness?
Maybe presidential politics is like healthcare -- are we paying far more than anybody in the world and getting less for it than anybody else in the world?
agree on the crane brinton.
agree on the crane brinton. found a copy of 'Anatomy of a Revolution' at a used bookstore and couldnt put it down. maybe as opposed to violence a form of passive resistance that hits the powers that be where it hurts would be more effective
see this.
http://madbuilder.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/at-a-loss/
Link between political support and disfunctional regulations
As I read yet another article explaining the insanity of the Wall Street fleecing of America, I am realizing that the worst part is that Americans have become so complacent and accommodating to their corporate masters that they are not even batting an eye. I think Jesus had it right when he threw the money changers out of the temple as they are sycophants of the real economy and use underhanded tactics and deceit to earn money beyond their worth.
I am interested in tracing the direct line between wall street's support of Congress and the dysfunctional legislation, which has allowed this nonsense to continue unchecked. Does anyone know a good place which discusses this specific topic?
Missing link
"I am interested in tracing the direct line between wall street's support of Congress and the dysfunctional legislation, which has allowed this nonsense to continue unchecked. Does anyone know a good place which discusses this specific topic?" -- 'Hope and no Expectations'
Hope,
Try this --
themoneyparty.org
I think you will not be disappointed.
__________
BTW: It's been forever since VBS, but here's my belief about Jesus knocking down the desks of the money changers in the Temple during Passover:
I think that Jesus did not object to currency exchange as such, or even to profiteering excesses thereof or to "sycophants of the real economy" -- not that he was giving any such excesses his blessing. I think he was objecting to the presence of these operations in the Temple, especially at Passover. Probably there were others at that time who held a similar dim view of the practice, although they did not protest it, at least not as forthrightly as did Jesus.
'Expulsion of the Money Changers', painting by Giotto (14 Century)
Note animals exit lower left!
Image (public domain) from Wikimedia Commons
Matthew 21:12 (KJV) "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves."
I always wondered what Jesus could have against doves, until a young animal-rights activist referred me to the New Living Translation (2007) --
Matthew 21:12 (NLT) "Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves."
According to John 2:12-16 (ESV) "“he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. But he said to those who sold doves, ‘Get these out of here! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!’
dysfunctional regulations
I think you mean loopholes and legislation written by and for corporate lobbyists that is passed into law. Almost everything that is passed into law these days seems to be written by corporate lobbyists. I wonder if Congressional legislative staffers have much to do it's so bad.
We have covered many a corrupt bill as it's happening on this site. To the left are a host of writers who do cover corrupt bills and scams through bought and paid for government officials.