President’s snow day
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the great island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this snowy Monday morning, George Washington’s real birthday being tomorrow, and Lincoln’s birthday being on the 12th of this month, thus, the all size fits all solution for everything in this country, “Presidents’ Day”, a day where America can just sit back, drink beer, eat fried and over processed “food” stuffs and bask in their great KNOWLEDGE of the real history of our great Presidents, and thus, understanding the lessons therein…as noted by a recent Gallup poll that asked the American people who they considered to be our greatest President–coming in at number one, drum roll please, was Ronald Reagan, with 19 percent of the vote! Followed up by Abraham Lincoln with 14 percent and John F. Kennedy at 11. Happy President’s Day! When asked by Bill Maher of HBO’s hit series, “REAL TIME, with Bill Maher”, when asked, ‘why, like with guys like Michael Milken and the rest of the crew involved in the Savings and Loan scadal of the 1980’s, why have not more Wall Street bankers seen a similar fate and been put in jail?’, Matt Taibbi, senior editor of Rolling Stone Magazine, and frequent guest of Bill’s show, responded with, “How much drug enforcement do you think would get done if the top narcs had a 2,000,000. dollar a year job waiting for them with the drug cartels?” Bill then asked, “Why do they belong in jail?” Taibbi: “Broadly, all the banks were involved (in the 2008 world wide economic meltdown, prompting the current ‘Great Recession’ which ‘ended’ in 2009) in a criminal fraud scheme that involved setting mismatched mortgage backed securities, these were crappy, toxic sub-prime mortgages that they were waving a brush of phony, baloney math over, and then selling them off to pension funds and insurance companies and banks in China, Holland, and Iceland, etc., all as triple A rated securities. It’s a straight drug scam, it’s selling oregano and pretending that it’s weed, it’s basically what they have been doing on a massive, massive scale, billions and billions of dollars.” Bill: “If Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs, largest and most profitable investment banking firm in the world, located in New York, New York) had one six month as& pounding prison term, all this bullsh&t would end.” T: “That’s exactly right.” B: “I listened to Katie Couric of CBS NEWS and heard her say of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, that it was the biggest financial fraud in the history of the United States, and I thought that Matt would probably take exception to that.” T: “Yeah, even his colleagues in the financial service industries far outdid Madoff, Bernie Madoff was just doing and age old ponzi scheme, which was invented back in the 20’s, this is old hat. The other guys on Wall Street were doing it on a much, much larger scale and were effecting far more people.” B: “You’re article on Goldman Sachs and I’m going to quote this, which has been quoted everywhere, I’ve read this quote, I mean when you wrote this you know you wrote a hit, “Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful investment bank, is a great Vampire Squid, wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming it’s blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” (applause on set) B: “And there is such a thing as a Vampire Squid.” T: “Yes, it’s actually a small, kind animal about this big (holding his hand out about 6 inches).” So our collective apologies to real Vampire Squid everywhere in the oceans across the planet. Bill then brought up the fact that Mubarak, Egypt’s former dictator, may have his money or assets frozen, as the Egyptian people lay claim to his corrupt financial practices over the past thirty years. However, when it comes to people who have looted us, i.e. the big banks of Wall Street, what gives? Taibbi: “They got away scott free, it’s amazing, there are a million people in foreclosure right now in this country, and the guys that sold them those predatory loans are still living like Pablo Escobar, I mean, they got to keep all that money. And the worst case scenario, Andrea Mosilo, (sp?) from Countrywide Insurance Company, he was the only guy who got punished in that whole universe, yet he got to keep three quarters of his net worth, so crime does pay in this country.” B: “So who are the Mubarak level looters that you would say, I mean I would like to mention the guy from Lehman Brothers, as the audience knows, I lost most of my savings at Lehman brothers, and I never miss an opportunity to look straight into the camera and say “thanks as$holes!” Dick Fuld, what a Dick Fuld, and I think he’s worth over 500 million dollars?” Taibbi: “500 million dollars.” B: “500 million dollars he got away with…” T: “Right, he cashed out because he probably knew something was going on, he told happy investors like you that everything was cool and you kept your money with Lehman brothers and that’s how they…” B: “And what about Alan Greenspan? You’re a big fan?” Taibbi: “Actually, I have a whole chapter in my book entitled, ‘biggest as*hole in the Universe,’ about Alan Greenspan, look, the FED plays an enormous role, Alan Greenspan played a huge role in the bubbles that went on, the tech bubble in the 90’s, the mortgage bubble we just went through, basically any time Wall Street screws up, they get to go to the FED and borrow a whole bunch of money for free, and start the game all over again. These guys get to go to the FED, borrow money at zero, and then they lend it out to us at 5, 10, I mean, how much are you paying for your credit card, say 20 percent? and that’s free money. It’s essentially a giant subsidy system (corporate welfare, it’s not just for breakfast anymore).” B: “And then they blame the teacher’s union.” Taibbi: “Exactly.” B: “You know, it’s all about the math teacher in Oshkosh, whose making 35k a year, why can’t people see through this? I mean I know people are dumb, but there’s gotta be more than something to it than that?” T: “It’s unbelievable that people can’t connect the dots. These pension funds that those state workers have, these were the people that were the VICTIMS of those mortgage backed securities schemes, these were the places where these banks were selling these toxic, sub-prime mortgages that eventually blew up, the pension funds lost all their money, now the states have to pay these pensions and they’re broke, and they’re blaming the teachers, they’re blaming the firemen, they’re blaming the policemen, when in fact, they were all defrauded by these banks on Wall Street. It’s an incredible situation.” Perhaps the best simple summation you will ever ‘hear’ regarding the raw TRUTH of what is really going on in our very connected world, a world that has been infected, no, strike that, in a world that is under attack by an out of control GREED, a sickness displayed by a few individuals, destroying the world we once knew, where men and women who served their country in public office with honor and distinction, would not be caught dead in bed with the wicked, crooked financial geniuses scheme, huddled in the dark caves of Wall Street, where these mathematical wizards devise clever, impossible to understand financial instruments out of whole cloth, slapping a triple A rating on them, making bets against them, all while encouraging their clients to purchase said securities, thus, duping and defrauding their own clients, not to mention the public trust, using predatory and misleading sales tactics against mostly lower middle class and even poor candidates, designed to lure in their prey into a sticky spider web that ensnares it’s victim for later consumption in the form of complicated fine print and robo foreclosures, (illegal practices by large banks such as Bank of America), that one would need a law degree from Harvard Law School to understand, not to mention the MIT degree in quantum physics and mathematics also required to decipher, decode and ultimately unravel the mysteries of the credit default swaps, all 600 trillion of them out there, better known as the derivatives market. Yet, with all of this factual information, we can still cling to the good news that 51 percent of the registered republicans in this country believe that Barrack Obama, our President here in the good ‘ole US of A, is not in fact, a citizen of this great country…that’s something right? Have a wonderful day folks and GOD’S SPEED to the Wisconsin 14! and the teachers’ unions of that great state, have Faith, for WE all know what is truly going down here, you represent the ‘fall guy’ to these tea party republicans, who represent big business more than the old guard GOP, who would have a hard time electing someone like their own patron Saint, Ronald Reagan. Big business sees the unions in this nation as the last hurdle to the political domination of the country at large. It is that simple and if you don’t believe me, you soon will. GOD BLESS the little guy. PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
