Seize the ????

"The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document." - Washington Post

File this under what the F?

Capitol shock over AIG bonuses

Barack Obama and others is hopping mad over $167 million dollars in bonuses that are to be paid to employees of AIG. Like the famous scene from Casablanca he and other pols in Washington are shocked that there is greed in the financial industry. He has instructed his "gelt" boy to try and stop it. My advice is don't hold your breath waiting for this.

"President Obama's apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda. "-Washington Post

The question many of us taxpayers are asking is why is AIG still around as a company? Why was it not forced into bankruptcy? Could it be that pols like Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry who own stock in AIG still have a chance of gettting some of their money out as long as we taxpayers keep the company on life support using taxpayers dollars?

Idiot bankers and us sucker taxpayers

I was on the Amtrak heading down to Washington D.C. last night when I opened up the Financial Times weekend edition. They had a front page story of retiring Andrew Lahde of the hedge fund Lahde Capital. He was one of the few money managers to have correctly predicted the sub prime crisis. One of his funds made a return of 870 per cent last year. In his farewell letter to his investors he talks about the elite “aristocracy” and the "idiot bankers" who were on the other side of his bets. You know the same ones we middle class taxpayers will be bailing out to the tune of a trillion dollars thanks to the lame brains in like my Congressman Tim Bishop and others. Here are some of the money quotes:

"Saying he was “in this game for the money”, Mr Lahde went on to mock those who traded with him.
“The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking.”
“These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government.
“All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”

Thank you Mr Laude for confirming what I suspected all along.

Bank of America profits down! Hola suckers!

"NEW YORK, April 21 -- Bank of America, which has a sprawling business in personal and commercial loans, reported a 77 percent decline in profit Monday, the latest indication of how financial troubles that started with sub prime mortgages have spread across the credit markets-Washington Post

I guess the great financial geniuses at The Bank of America who came up with the plan to give credit cards and sub prime mortgage loans to illegal immigrants may not have had such a great business idea after all. Perhaps BOA should change their name to Bank of Idiots. What's next? Forget turning to CNBC and the Wall Street Journal to find out. If you would have been listening to Bob you would have seen this train wreck coming a long time ago.

Bank of America's plan. Hola sucker taxpayers!

Yes the genius at the Bank of America are pushing a plan to help them out of the sub prime loan crisis. You remember Bank of America don't you? They are the geniuses who thought it would be a good idea to allow illegal immigrants to open up bank accounts with them. Then they went further and allowed illegal immigrants to get credit cards. Perhaps they should change the name of the bank to the Bank of Criminals.
Now these same corrupt banking officials have come up with a plan to help bail them out of their sub prime loan mess no doubt full of loans to illegal immigrants too. And guess who they want to be stuck holding the bag. Here is the money quote:

"Bank of America, which is in the process of acquiring Countrywide Financial and has potentially huge exposure, has circulated a proposal to create a new federal agency that would buy vast quantities of delinquent mortgages at a deep discount and replace them with fixed-rate federally guaranteed loans."-New York Times

Hola sucker taxpayers!

The Stimulus Bill and the corruption that caused it.

President Bush and congress had their photo op yesterday with the signing of the "Stimulus" Bill. Since I have paid my bills and loans on time, saved money and had some investment and work income that will just barely put me over the threshold. I will probably not recieve a check from the IRS from this legislation. However, since the money for the refunds of the stimulus bill will be borrowed I will be helping to pay it back in the future. And they wonder why we taxpayers are getting so angry.

But, while the lapdog pack mainstream media is mostly drooling over the Roger Clemens testimony there are more important storys that deserve more attention from the media and we the people that are directly related to why the stimulas bill was even created. Luckily, Washington Post reporter Carrie Johnson has a look at the roots of this financial meltdown and the corruption that caused it. Here is one of the "money" quotes:

"FBI officials said yesterday that they are conducting criminal investigations of 16 companies, while their partners at the Securities and Exchange Commission are probing nearly two dozen more. Those federal investigations follow subpoenas from attorneys general in at least four states and class-action lawsuits that target home builders, lenders, credit-rating agencies and the banks that packaged groups of mortgages into securities. "


This is a much more important story than if Roger Clemens got needles stuck in his butt. I say to the FBI and Security and Exchange Commission investigators: GO GET EM!

Blood on the floor

"Stock markets around the world plummeted yesterday as a financial crisis that began in the market for U.S. home mortgages spread to almost all corners of the globe."-Washington Post

Welcome to the global economy. The ripples from the Wall Street ponzi scheme known as the sub prime market has turned into a big wave that threatens to clear the beach. I hope that most of us investors survive and those bankers who came up with the idea of giving $650,000 home loans to illegal immigrants making $18,000 dollars per year and other bad risks get swept out to sea and never return.

Bank of America profits going down. What a surprise!

"In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the bank said it has some exposure to collateralized debt obligations _ complex financial instruments that combine slices of different kinds of risk. CDOs are often partly backed by subprime mortgages, or loans given to customers with poor credit history."-AP

TRANSLATION: I guess the great financial geniuses at The Bank of America who came up with the plan to give credit cards and sub prime mortgage loans to illegal immigrants may not have had such a great business idea after all. What's next? Listen to this guy:

You can take this to the bank.

" NEW YORK, Nov. 4 -- Citigroup has installed former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin as chairman after the widely anticipated resignation of Charles Prince, the embattled chairman and chief executive who faced mounting criticism in the wake of a $6.5 billion write-down for the third quarter.
After an emergency board meeting Sunday, Citigroup, citing significant declines in the value of subprime-related securities in the past month, estimated that it would take additional write-downs of $8 billion to $11 billion." - Washington Post



How could this have happened? Just because the banks had tapped out America's middle class and started giving out subprime loans to people who had no ability to repay them. That seems like an ok business practice. I mean when they give out a $650,000 mortgage to an illegal immigrant making $18,000 a year. What could go wrong? Adios Citibank, Hola Bank of America.

So this is what happens.

"The percentage of mortgages entering foreclosure rose to a record level during the three months ended June 30, according to a survey released yesterday."-Washington Post

Hmmm so this is what happens when lenders give loans to people who can barely afford them including illegal immigrants who should not be here in the first place but, of course the mainstream corporate media does not raise that issue. Meanwhile congress and President Bush seem to want to us taxpayer dollars to bail the lenders and the sub prime buyers out and in so doing will make sure that people and the lenders who made these bad loans will never learn the lessons of finance. That lending money requires diligence and responsibility. I paid off my college, car, home and even time share loans. I did it because it my responsibility to do so. I seems that concept is being ignored with those involved in these sub prime loans.

That sucking sound continues out of our wallets.

"The amount of money Latin American immigrants sent home from the United States grew at a slower rate during the first two months of the year than in the same period a year ago, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. The slowdown puzzled some experts who study such remittances, which contribute significantly to Latin American economies."-Washington Post

While that may actually be good news for Americans to know that less money is leaving local communities and being sent out of the country. It still does not change the fact that middle class taxpayers are still subsidizing the illegal immigrant workforce. As this money quote from a recent report from F.A.I.R. shows:

"Analysis based on current estimates of the illegal alien population residing in New York indicates that population is costing the state’s taxpayers more than $5.1 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. That annual tax burden amounts to about $874 per New York household headed by a native-born resident. Even if the estimated $730 million in sales, income and property taxes collected from illegal immigrants are subtracted from the fiscal outlays, net costs still amount to more than $4.5 billion per year. "- FAIR

So the lower remittances being sent out of the country immigrants will not be good news until the money flowing out of U.S. taxpayers wallets like those of us in New York also gets lower.
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From the Mexican Government's Hola Sucker files!

Memo to the Chairman of Bank of America:

Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sl9crc4NGI