Congress sells out to Wall Street

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The total tab for the Wall Street bailout, including money spent and promised by the United States government, works out to an estimated $42,000 for every man, woman and child, according to American Casino, a documentary about sub-prime lending and the financial meltdown. The predatory lending free-for-all, the emergency pumping of taxpayer dollars to prop up megabanks and the lavish bonuses handed out to Wall Street executives in the aftermath are all issues that have dominated news headlines.

But another twist in the story has received scant attention from the mainstream news media: the unsettling combination of lax oversight from national politicians with high-dollar campaign contributions from financial players.

"The worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état," Matt Taibbi wrote in "The Big Takeover," a March, 2009 Rolling Stone article. "They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations."

In the 10-year period beginning in 1998, the financial sector spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions, and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties.

Wall Street's spending spree on political contributions coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations, which in turn created a recipe for the astronomical financial disaster that sent the global economy reeling.

Sources: "Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It," Greg Gordon, Truthout.org and McClatchey Newspapers, October 2, 2008; "Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns," Lindsay Renick Mayer, Capitol Eye, February 10, 2009; "The Big Takeover," Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, March 2009.

(Emphasis Added)

Excerpt from
Censored! | Feature | Tucson Weekly

 

[Paulie]

Congress sells out to Wall Street

We've got a god damn GENIUS on our hands here, folks!!!

What're you, NEW?

 

[manu1959]

how much did they send to the UAW via the auto industry.....

in any event....if you had a 401k or a social security account....the govt...basically underwrote and protected that investment by bailing out the financial industries.....

so in essence they spent 50k on your behalf to protect your retirement fund.....

spin away......

 

[Toro]

Wall Street owns DC.

“To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform.”
-Mervyn King

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - How to manage the gigantic financial cuckoo in our nest

 

[Oddball]

You've got that exactly backwards.

The District of Criminals owns Wall Street. The payola is merely the capos sending the Godfather his cut of the protection racket money.