The Bailout Was A Bank Robbery

[MisterBeale]

Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Here, I hate to leave you hanging.

Like it really freakin' mattered. TARP was passed by the FED. They threatened and blackmailed all the elected pols in D.C. with utter ruin if they didn't do it.

Surly one such as you would not stoop to Paulette's level and post that accusation without credible substantiation.

Curiously you failed to post it.

Secrets and Lies of the Bailout
Secrets and Lies of the Bailout | Rolling Stone
THEY LIED TO PASS THE BAILOUT

Today what few remember about the bailouts is that we had to approve them. It wasn't like Paulson could just go out and unilaterally commit trillions of public dollars to rescue Goldman Sachs and Citigroup from their own stupidity and bad management (although the government ended up doing just that, later on). Much as with a declaration of war, a similarly extreme and expensive commitment of public resources, Paulson needed at least a film of congressional approval. And much like the Iraq War resolution, which was only secured after George W. Bush ludicrously warned that Saddam was planning to send drones to spray poison over New York City, the bailouts were pushed through Congress with a series of threats and promises that ranged from the merely ridiculous to the outright deceptive. At one meeting to discuss the original bailout bill – at 11 a.m. on September 18th, 2008 – Paulson actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse "within 24 hours."

CONGRESS THREATENED WITH MARTIAL LAW IF BAILOUT BILL DOESN'T PASS

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A California congressman opposed to the Bush administration’s bailout package said “the sky did not fall” after the House rejected the bill, despite consternations from “Wall Street fear mongers.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D) didn’t call Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson a Chicken Little outright, but he did say the dire consequences Paulson and others warned about didn’t happen after the House rejected the bailout Monday.

“They claimed the market would drop by 2,000 points if we failed to do so quickly,” Sherman wrote in a letter to colleagues on Wednesday that criticized the authors of the bill. “The bailout bill’s prospects are still uncertain. Yet at its close yesterday the Dow stood at 10,850, down just 1.5 percent from Thursday’s close.”

He also said the drop in the stock market after the bill’s failure Monday has been exaggerated. Though the 777-point fall was the largest point drop in the history of the Dow Jones index, Sherman said that percentage-wise, it was the 17th largest daily drop.

Sherman has become a leader of opponents to the bailout after he put out an impromptu call for skeptics of the bill to meet in a Rayburn meeting room. The members who showed up are now referred to by some as the “Skeptics Caucus.”

Sherman was among 95 Democrats who voted no on the $700 billion package, which failed 205-228. The Senate is to vote tonight on a package that now includes a “patch” for the alternative minimum tax and extensions of popular tax credits.

Do you have a serious source? Because Rolling Stone ain't it.

They threatened and blackmailed all the elected pols in D.C. with utter ruin if they didn't do it.

You need to look up the definition of blackmail.
As far as utter ruin, that was a real possibility if the banking system collapsed.


“They claimed the market would drop by 2,000 points if we failed to do so quickly,”

They didn't threaten to cause it to go down 2,000 points, they warned it could. Huge difference.

Fine, I withdraw the word "blackmail" if that will make you happy. Apparently you didn't read the post carefully. I included TWO sources. Another source was a video and analysis from LIVELEAK, directly from the floor of congress.

One of the sources I used, right in the title of the piece, says, they threatened the nation with martial law. So, what ever. Watch the video if you don't believe it. If you don't view that fear mongering as "threats," well, I guess it is all really subjective.

One of the sources I used, right in the title of the piece, says, they threatened the nation with martial law.

Someone else needs to learn a real definition.
Martial Law. The exercise of government and control by military authorities over the civilian population of a designated territory.
Last I checked, the Federal Reserve has no military and no authority over any military force.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

What amazes me is that the very same financial entities that took part in the crash somehow managed to make money after the crash without having to make bad loans.

When I was looking for that info for SAYIT, I ran across this. . .

"Even worse, the $700 billion in TARP loans ended up being dwarfed by more than $7.7 trillion in secret emergency lending that the Fed awarded to Wall Street – loans that were only disclosed to the public after Congress forced an extraordinary one-time audit of the Federal Reserve. The extent of this "secret bailout" didn't come out until November 2011, when Bloomberg Markets, which went to court to win the right to publish the data, detailed how the country's biggest firms secretly received trillions in near-free money throughout the crisis.


Goldman Sachs, which had made such a big show of being reluctant about accepting $10 billion in TARP money, was quick to cash in on the secret loans being offered by the Fed. By the end of 2008, Goldman had snarfed up $34 billion in federal loans – and it was paying an interest rate of as low as just 0.01 percent for the huge cash infusion. Yet that funding was never disclosed to shareholders or taxpayers, a fact Goldman confirms. "We did not disclose the amount of our participation in the two programs you identify," says Goldman spokesman Michael Duvally.


Goldman CEO Blankfein later dismissed the importance of the loans, telling the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that the bank wasn't "relying on those mechanisms." But in his book, Bailout, Barofsky says that Paulson told him that he believed Morgan Stanley was "just days" from collapse before government intervention, while Bernanke later admitted that Goldman would have been the next to fall.


Meanwhile, at the same moment that leading banks were taking trillions in secret loans from the Fed, top officials at those firms were buying up stock in their companies, privy to insider info that was not available to the public at large. Stephen Friedman, a Goldman director who was also chairman of the New York Fed, bought more than $4 million of Goldman stock over a five-week period in December 2008 and January 2009 – years before the extent of the firm's lifeline from the Fed was made public. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit bought nearly $7 million in Citi stock in November 2008, just as his firm was secretly taking out $99.5 billion in Fed loans. Jamie Dimon bought more than $11 million in Chase stock in early 2009, at a time when his firm was receiving as much as $60 billion in secret Fed loans. When asked by Rolling Stone, Chase could not point to any disclosure of the bank's borrowing from the Fed until more than a year later, when Dimon wrote about it in a letter to shareholders in March 2010."
Page 4 of Secrets and Lies of the Bailout | Rolling Stone

So I guess it isn't that surprising they made lots of money, and the CEO's all got bonuses.

In fact, it looks like they may have even payed back TARP with secret loans from tax payers. Isn't that a hoot?

In fact, it looks like they may have even payed back TARP with secret loans from tax payers.

Yes, it's funny that you think the Fed loans taxpayer funds.

I never said the FED loans tax payers anything.

In fact, it looks like they may have even payed back TARP with secret loans from tax payers.

Well, by all means, explain what these "secret loans" were.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Only bank robbery in history where the money was repaid and the US Treasury made tens of billions.

I think if you look closer you'll see they only paid back fifty cents on the dollar or something like that. So you gonna watch the movie?

Just the 6 largest bank TARP borrowers, B of A, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman and Morgan Stanley, borrowed $160 billion and paid back about $185 billion.

Your fifty cents claim is crap.

Bailout List: Banks, Auto Companies, and More | Eye on the Bailout | ProPublica

This exchange once again illustrates the diff between low-info loony libs (BooBoo) whose "knowledge" is based on what he thinks he may have heard somewhere (or "something like that") and a rational person (ToddsterP) who clearly understands that facts inform the best conclusions.

Although now armed with the hard facts that trump his loony left assumptions, BooBoo will nonetheless continue to believe and espouse the baseless silliness that so regularly oozes from his keyboard.

Barack Obama says banks paid back all the federal bailout money

Mostly true.

The $7 trillion secret loan program: The government and big banks should be punished for deceiving the public about their hush-hush bailout scheme.

The government and the big banks deceived the public about their $7 trillion secret loan program. They should be punished.
By Eliot Spitzer

They should be spanked......by hookers.

Thanks. Spitzer is hilarious.

 

[Avorysuds]

There is a movie coming out in November called the Big Short. Sounds like it's a movie about how the bankers basically pulled the largest bank robbery in world history. From the preview I just saw it looks like the movie is about how they did it. Tarp, too big to fail, it was all so obvious to me. I'm hoping this movie vindicates those who believe the rich and powerful have become too dangerous for democracy.

Pretty sad when mega rich bastards had to be helped while the rest of those that pay those taxes got the shaft...

I agree... Thanks Obama... I mean Bush if I want your support =)

 

[EricWilliams]

The book is better than the movie...