A Night At The Wall Street Meltdown

Sorry for the low posting the past two days.

I've been a bit jammed up on the homefront, and, likely, will be for another day (right now, I am aiming to get back to posting, regular-like, tomorrow (Tues) evening, or Wed AM, at the latest).

But it's hard sitting on the sidelines, so, a few, brief observations.

Hank Paulson ... Al Haig ... Al Haig ... Hank Paulson

Not since those heady days of Reagan's Morning After, have we had such a low-rent, second-banana, administration hack look to take over control of the government.

Henry "Hank" Paulson is showing Alexander Haig what a piker he was.

Haig was just looking to grab a little spotlight, feel the power for a few minutes, maybe sit in the big chair for a spell.

But Paulson ... It's simply breathtaking ...

Like this;

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Paulson wants to dole out $700-Billion to his, and the Bush Grindhouse's, Wall Street cronies, carte blanche!

I mean, considering his background (He came from Goldman Sachs - I don't believe you need to fire up Google Maps to know where they are), it was already the fox guarding the hen house, and now, with this Ponzi-inspiring scam, The Commander Guy is greenlighting handing out the contract for guarding all the hen houses, to said same fox.

Simply breathtaking, in its' raw, naked sleaziness.

Fortunately, there's nearly universal, fist-pounding, raised-eyebrows, no-fucking-way steam building up, notably from Senator Chris Dodd, with an alternative that dwarfs Hank's plans, in details.

The heavy-duty arguments, and horse-trading begins in Congress tomorrow (undoubtedly, under the attack of fear bombs being lobbed by the Bush Grindhouse).

But for now, Hank's Heist looks pretty similar to something else;

A Night At The Opera: Contract Scene




Bonus Hank's Heist Riffs

Nicole Belle - Definition Of Economic Insanity: Handing Paulson A Blank Check For Bailouts

Cernig: Bailout Or Rearranging Deckchairs? (Updated)

Ian Welsh: Hank Paulson’s Raid on the Treasury

Larisa Alexandrovna: Welcome to the final stages of the coup...

Robert Reich: What Wall Street Should Do To Get Its Blank Check

Bill Moyers & Kevin Phillips on Bad Money

Top Ten Cloves: Names Considered To Rename Wall Street

It's A Pig, with Lipstick, and She Likes To Be Called Bear Stearns ...

Well, so much for our advice last Friday.

Kelly Evans, from the WSJ, speaking on MSNBC this morning, glossed over the failure and collapse of Bear Stearns as a "unique situation".

Really?

Just about everyone else writing or commenting on this believes this is the start of a conga line (hmmm, Prez Prado's Mambo No. 5 might be a good soundtrack) and we'll be reading about future financial institution failures like a baseball box score.

It took the Bush Grindhouse nearly a week to respond to devastation in New Orleans, brought by Hurricane Katrina, yet they snap into action - ON A SUNDAY - to bailout a corporate bandit like Bear Stearns.

Did they bury the footage?

Were investment bankers, mortgage officers, bond traders, standing on the roof of Bear Stearns, waving white sheets with "Help" scrawled on them?

Were masses of these greedheads huddled in the lobby of the Bear Stearns building, perhaps having gone for hours, without a cappuccino, or bottle of mineral water?

Maybe, to pass the time, they simply played cards.

Heaven forbid, one of the Bush Grindhouse's corporate cronies be inconvenienced.

If they had a television in the lobby yesterday morning, and were tuned into the Sunday news programs, their spirits would have been lifted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Paulson trotted from show-to-show, putting lipstick on the all the pigs, still singing a happy song.

From Gretchen Morgenson/NYT, yesterday morning;

"WHAT are the consequences of a world in which regulators rescue even the financial institutions whose recklessness and greed helped create the titanic credit mess we are in? Will the consequences be an even weaker currency, rampant inflation, a continuation of the slow bleed that we have witnessed at banks and brokerage firms for the past year?

Or all of the above?

Stick around, because we’ll soon find out. And it’s not going to be pretty."

This is a good read, as Morgenson goes on a blistering listing of Bear Stearns' failure, greed, arrogance, mismanagement, like a DA reading a long rap sheet.

As to Paulson, here's Krugman this morning;

"It’s true that Henry Paulson, the current Treasury secretary, still says that any proposal to use taxpayers’ money to help resolve the crisis is a “non-starter.” But that’s about as credible as all of his previous pronouncements on the financial situation."

And this;

"As I said, the important thing is to bail out the system, not the people who got us into this mess. That means cleaning out the shareholders in failed institutions, making bondholders take a haircut, and canceling the stock options of executives who got rich playing heads I win, tails you lose.

According to late reports on Sunday, JPMorgan Chase will buy Bear for a pittance. That’s an O.K. resolution for this case — but not a model for the much bigger bailout to come. Looking ahead, we probably need something similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which took over bankrupt savings and loan institutions and sold off their assets to reimburse taxpayers. And we need it quickly: things are falling apart as you read this.

$2 per share.

Yeah, J.P. Morgan got a steal, and likely that price was inflated, but we hope that Bear Stearns is held accountable, beyond the embarrassment of just ending up Penny Stock aisle.

And, no doubt, start counting the times The Bailout Commander, and his surrogate son, John McCain, call for making the Bush Tax cuts permanent.


Bonus Bailout Baloney

Scarecrow/Firedoglake: Bush Is Becoming Hoover; Where is FDR?

Cernig/The Newshoggers: Bush Says White House In Control Of Financial Rout

Jeff Fecke/Shakesville: Moral Hazards are for Poor People

Prairie Weather: Financial markets: "Like waking up in summer with snow on the ground"

Brilliant at Breakfast: But if you lose your job, do you think for one minute the government will help YOU

emptywheel/Firedoglake: Credit Crises