Stocks hold modest losses into the final hour on little news. Since Monday the DOW has gained about 100 points or 1% while the NASDAQ is up 10 points or some 1/2%. The ECRI Weekly Leading Index managed to arrest its slide last week with an increase to 130.9, the smoothed annualized snapped a string of losses to increase to 13.1.
Remember when then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was pounding the table in front of Congress extolling the virtues of transparency and exclaiming how much he and everybody else wanted it whilst imploring them to authorize 700 billion Dollars for the TARP bailout back in 2008.
That and other taxpayer-funded programs have run some 2-trillion Dollars. To date we still don’t know who got what or exactly what they did with it other than quite a number of obscenely large bonuses to a bunch of banksters who’s appalling job performance should have qualified them for unemployment.
Bloomberg filled a FIOS lawsuit back in November 2008 seeking the bailout records. The Fed lost the first round when the judge told them to release said records as requested. The Fed promptly appealed the ruling and as it turns out recently lost said appeal and was told once again to release the records. Gee I always thought transparency meant you weren’t supposed to hide stuff… Don’t hold your breath as the Fed has one more appeal and then the Supreme Court so it could be a few years yet before we find out what really happened.
On that subject Lehman’s use of “Repo 105” accounting, a highly questionable though apparently legal trick to clean up its balance sheet on a par with put the sack of guano outside the back door, let the inspectors in, give them the 10 cent tour, when everything is all clear bring said sack back inside. Is causing quite a stir following Ben Bernanke’s assertation that the Fed had no idea about the Repo 105 stuff over at Lehman. As the NY Fed, under Timothy Geithner had a team of so called experts on site at Lehman as did the SEC supposedly with full access. All this as per a disclosure by former Merrill Lynch staff that warned both the Fed and the SEC of Lehman’s Repo 105 games back in early 2008. Someone’s not telling the truth and frankly given the recent track record of the investment banks, regulators and the Fed it could be any or all of them as combined they don’t have enough credibility to fill a teacup at this point.
But what really galls me is that for 2 trillion Dollars you would think that a taxpayer could at least get some accountability out of the deal. Instead the Fed fights it tooth and nail, Senator Chris Dodd talks up his supposed financial reform bill and states “were not going to punish the banks”. Why the “bleep” not? They’ve imploded the economy and visited financial ruin on a global scale. Adam Smiths capitalist vision demands they be punished; bankruptcy and unemployment would be a good start. Instead our elected officials tip toe around, saying “there, there it’ll be alright” whilst handing out some 2 trillion in taxpayer funds.
Hi and welcome to The Profit Motive, I’m your host Caleb Lawrence. Once upon a time in America the media acted as the watchdog of the corporations and the state. In the modern era it’s all about ratings and profits, opinion has been substituted for news and frequently is presented as fact. Much like my daily radio show on KPIG 107.5 FM in Santa Cruz California and KPYG FM 94.9 Cayucos/San Luis Obispo California. A thousand Blogs were able to spot the current problems and many began discussing it years before it reached crises proportions. While there were exceptions, and these exceptions are becoming more common, the mainstream media failed to get it and largely continue to do so.
