Do You Want to Have Some Answers?

Listen,

Do you want to know a secret,

Do you promise not to tell?  whoa oh, oh.

Closer, 

Let me whisper in your ear,

Say the words you long to hear,

I'm in love with you.

If you thought that was from the Beatles, you were right.  If you thought it was from Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, and/or Ben Bernanke to large financial services firms, you are also correct.

From the online Wall Street Journal finally comes verification that the Federal Government and the Federal Reserve have been conspiring in secret to simply take taxpayer money and give it to the giant financial firms that helped to create the financial crisis; this includes foreign companies.

In conjunction with TARP and related giveaways, this may be the greatest scandal in U.S. history; it is almost certainly the greatest financial scandal. Teapot Dome was nothing compared to this. (Watergate and the cover-up were of a different nature.)

For months, we have kept hearing about the need to keep "the system" going.  But the most important part of the system is trust.  Why should anyone now trust anything coming out of the Fed, the Treasury Department, the companies involved, etc?

  

Taking matters one step further, will people look at Treasury Secretary (therefore head of the IRS) Geithner and his chiseling on his taxes; almost-health care czar Daschle and his chiseling on his taxes; Ron Kirk (nominee for Trade Representative) and his chiseling on his taxes; et al, and decide that since no one is giving them a bailout, they will take theirs the Italian way, and simply evade their tax obligations?

Let's put the culprit firms out of business, and not recycle their names when new companies are formed to take their place.

In any case, here's the beginning of the article; click on the hyperlink for the full piece.

MARCH 7, 2009

Top U.S., European Banks Got $50 Billion in AIG Aid

By SERENA NG and CARRICK MOLLENKAMP

The beneficiaries of the government's bailout of American International Group Inc. include at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions that have been paid roughly $50 billion since the Federal Reserve first extended aid to the insurance giant.

Among those institutions are Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Germany's Deutsche Bank AG, each of which received roughly $6 billion in payments between mid-September and December 2008, according to a confidential document and people familiar with the matter.

Will a supine Congress finally convene the modern equivalent of the Pecora Commission of 1933?

Will the executive branch appoint a special prosecutor/investigator?

When will Ben Bernanke go back to Princeton?

Is there a modern equivalent of Deep Throat providing the WSJ with the true story?

Hold onto your hats, John Q. Public. The ride could be bumpy. Nothing less than truth, justice and the American Way are in the balance. Will the mild-mannered Barack Obama morph from Clark Kent to Superman? Perhaps Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi as Superwoman?

This is a hit show with an indefinite run.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2009