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Dec 2, 2010

WSJ piece on the bailout and how close we came to world melt-down.

 

From: joe webb <webfoote41@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 11:51 PM


 


WSJ, Dec. 2, 2010

...Interesting piece on the cliff-hanger. Its position is that the bail-out was absolutely necessary and that it should never have to happen again. "These too-big-to-fail behemoths" must be broken up.

Now how is this for criticism and self criticism by Capital itself?

Then note the figure of "$3,300 billion in loans to banks and companies without a congressional say-so."  Many loans went to foreign banks and so on.  Do you think Congress would have authorized  three trillion plus?  In short, hell no.  And then what would have happened? The below seems to suggest that Congress might be charged with responsibility for such gigantic loans/bailouts...pretty strange for the WSJ.

Competitive capitalism is supposed to be characterized by a myriad of firms any one of which , or combination of which, cannot affect the system as a whole.  That is classic Laissez-Faire.  Then, to make matters worse today, the concentration of monopolistic or monopsonistic (limited monopoly) firms in Finance is an unnatural disaster waiting to happen.

Add in the Insider Trading that we are reading about today in the news, and the confidence necessary for the system as a whole to work, is further eroded. So here we have the Watchmen, like the FT and WSJ telling the truth about the reckless nature of the Best and the Brightest on Wall St. Or, if not the best/brightest, the crookedest.

The Jewish angle should be researched and some kind of measured judgment rendered on just how much of Wall St. wretchedness is Jewish and how much is White, etc. The Color of Crime on Wall St.

At the time, while many Rightists were against the bailouts and all of the Left, the Real Left, were against as well, the moderate left and right were for them, from the NYT on the left, to I guess the WSJ..don't recall for sure. I was for the bailout. Just about all the money has been repaid with interest. Now the Financial System must be roto-rooted by the SEC and so on.

Joe Webb


START:

Search FT.comThursday Dec 2 2010
All times are London time

Wall Street owes its survival to the Fed
By Sebastian Mallaby

Published: December 2 2010 14:47 | Last updated: December 2 2010 14:47

For a brief, surreal moment, the prevailing narrative in Washington was that the 2008-09 bail-outs were not really so bad. In September, Treasury secretary Tim Geithner called the government's troubled asset relief programme "one of the most effective emergency programmes in financial history", claiming that the final cost to taxpayers would be less than $50bn.

Steven Rattner, the Wall Street banker who oversaw the Obama administration's rescue of the auto sector, wrote in the Financial Times in October that "without exaggeration, this legislation [establishing Tarp] did more to keep America's financial system – and therefore its economy – functioning than any passed since the 1930s".

But Wednesday's document dump from the Federal Reserve – a congressionally ordered "WikiLeak moment" – puts this bargain-bail-out patter in a new perspective. The post-Lehman rescues were far broader than Tarp, and far riskier for taxpayers, even if the alternative of a systemic meltdown would have been worse.

The Federal Reserve's revelations underscore the might of unelected central bankers. The Treasury's Tarp rescue fund, at $700bn, was considered so audacious that Congress at first refused to authorise it. But the Fed doled out no less than $3,300bn in loans to banks and companies without a congressional say-so.

What's more, the Fed frequently ignored Walter Bagehot's dictum that central banks should provide liquidity freely, but against good collateral and at high interest rates. The Fed's borrowers included institutions such as Lehman and Citigroup, which were insolvent rather than illiquid. It accepted collateral that included toxic asset-backed securities, and it charged interest rates that were more palliative than punitive. Moreover, while the Fed took all these risks with US taxpayers' money, a large chunk of its emergency lending went to foreign banks.

In its statement accompanying its data dump, the Fed claimed soothingly to have "followed sound risk-management practices". It is hard to square that boast with the Fed's Maiden Lane facility, which accepted some of Bear Stearns' most toxic assets as collateral for a $29bn loan to its acquirer JPMorgan Chase. The Fed also stated that its "facilities were open to participants that met clearly outlined eligibility criteria". But one wonders about criteria that permitted taxpayer-backed loans to everyone from Verizon Communications and Harley-Davidson to Sumitomo Corp and the Bank of Nova Scotia.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, manfully concedes that the central bank took "an enormous amount of risk with the people's money". But he adds that the risk is now behind us – that the loans have been paid back and "we didn't lose a dime and in fact we made money". Yet it is too early to say that. The Fed has yet to recoup the money leant to JPMorgan in the Bear Stearns rescue; and its later Maiden Lane programmes, created to help AIG, have not been repaid either. Indeed, the Fed still has some $29bn of AIG loans on its balance sheet. The collateral backing this largesse includes $9bn of subprime mortgages and other smelly assets of dubious value.

The point is not that the Fed was wrong in its determination to stem the panic following the Lehman bust. Indeed, if the European Central Bank were similarly audacious, the euro-zone might be better off today. The most recent leg of Europe's crisis began when the ECB ran out of good collateral to lend against, and demanded that politicians assume the burden of the bail-out – a role that the politicians predictably bungled. Far better to have an activist central bank that takes ugly risks with its own balance sheet than a fastidious puritan that throws the economy to the elected dogs.

Rather, the point is that the Fed bail-outs were hair-raisingly enormous, and that neither the regulators nor the regulated should be allowed to forget that. Wall Street institutions that now walk tall again survived only because the taxpayers saved them. Goldman Sachs turned to the Fed for funding on 84 occasions, and Morgan Stanley did so 212 times; Blackrock, Fidelity, Dreyfus, GE Capital – all of these depended on taxpayer backstops. The message from this data dump is that, two years ago, these too-big-to-fail behemoths drove the world to the brink of a 1930s-style disaster – and that, if regulators don't break them up or otherwise restrain them, they may do worse next time.

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Senior Turkey official says Israel behind WikiLeaks release

 


http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/senior-turkey-official-says-israel-behind-wikileaks-release-1.328373

A senior Turkish official blamed Israel for the WikiLeaks release, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Wednesday.

Addressing reporters, Huseyin Celik, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party, hinted that Israel engineered the leak of hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables as a plot to pressure the Turkish government.

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Dick Cheney about to be indicted

 

From: Manuel Sotil <msotil@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 8:34 PM


in, of all places, Nigeria!

The possibility of Dick Cheney seeing the inside of a Nigerian courthouse would be the fulfillment of many a wet dream, but unfortunately a remote one.

Although far-fetched, his airplane may someday have to make an emergency landing in some country that honors extradition requests from Nigeria.

Once in neutral territory, long delayed charges for waging illegal wars and crimes against humanity could be added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11902489


Manuel Sotil





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"The Nuremberg trial (1945-1946) is the crime of crimes"

 


Date: December 2, 2010 12:38:11 PM EST
Subject: "The Nuremberg trial (1945-1946) is the crime of crimes"

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One-Third of Israeli Support Wartime Concentration Camps for Palestinian Citizens

 



From: Richard Silverstein <richards1052@comcast.net>
Date: December 2, 2010 3:37:55 PM EST


Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place
December 2, 2010 12:36 PM

One-Third of Israeli Support Wartime Concentration Camps for Palestinian Citizens

japanese internment camp

Fate of Israeli Palestinian children during next war or crisis?

One nugget I overlooked (pg. 142) in the Israel Democracy Institute annual survey which I featured here a day or so ago is this one that Ofer Neiman pointed out to me.  33% of Israelis support placing Israeli Palestinian citizens in concentration

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GORDON DUFF: THE WIKI HOAX

 



From: gpduf@aol.com
Date: December 2, 2010 4:49:15 PM EST
To: gpduf@aol.com
Subject: GORDON DUFF: THE WIKI HOAX

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The American Conservative » If WikiLeaks Is a PsyOp, Whose PsyOp Is It?

 

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/12/01/if-wikileaks-is-a-psyop-whose-psyop-is-it/

Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367

What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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Irish Press : Conference on Holocaust Denial

 


From: Bradley Smith / Codoh <bradley1930@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 4:40 PM



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Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust


  NOTE:  This letter was copied to the Irish print and Online press.



The Irish Independent

Independent House
27 - 32 Talbot Street
Dublin 1. Ireland

Telephone: +353 (0)1 705 5333

independent.letters@independent.ie

http://www.independent.ie/


Subject:  Conference on Holocaust Denial


For Publication


01 December 2010


Hello from California-


I am writing in response to Ms. Hilary White's article Specter of Nazi death Camps Casts a Long Shadow published Sunday November 28 2010 in The Independent, treating with the Conference on Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial held at Trinity College. I am a Revisionist and asked to attend the conference. Unfortunately I, along with several other Revisionists, was denied permission to even attend to listen to the speakers at this Conference. Expressing Revisionist views is a felony in many countries and I wanted to learn more about why my views are treated as a new blasphemy punishable by up to 5 years in jail.


I would like to comment on Ms. White's statement that, "The conference 'Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial: New Perspectives' aimed to get minds moving through reasoned discourse."


Is Ms. White aware that Deniers were banned from this Conference on Denial and that several Conference speakers have themselves supported and even advocated criminalization of Denial as a thought crime? Would Ms. White argue that these are reasonable or even sane methods to get minds moving through a reasoned discourse?


Ms. White, conflating anti-Semitism with Holocaust denial, as does the Conference itself, writes that Holocaust denial is a "contaminant." Contaminant?


I beg Ms. White's pardon, but that doesn't sound like a desire for reasoned discourse to me. Holocaust revisionism is not about Israel or anti-Semitism. Revisionism is a process; one of reviewing the received history of the Holocaust in the routine way that all other historical issues are reviewed. George Santayana wrote -- History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.


This is particularly true in times of war. Revisionists point out that Truth is oftentimes the first causality of war. For anyone who follows the history of the Holocaust it is plain that this history is being revised even as deniers are being imprisoned. Further scholarship and research on the Holocaust should be encouraged, not discouraged and repressed by taboo and the threat of imprisonment.


There were important questions to be discussed at this Conference relating to history, free speech, minority access to public forums, and peaceful relations with Iranian and other Islamic peoples. Unfortunately, it looks like the Conference deliberately missed an opportunity to get minds moving with new ideas or an honest discussion either one.


Sincerely yours,


David Merlin

Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust


Merlin299@aol.com    (415) 435-2439


For a Denier Blog on this subject-

http://bradleysmithsblog.blogspot.com/






--

Being happy–is it good for the Jews? "Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". –Michael Santomauro

An antisemite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an antisemite.--Michael Santomauro

Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is "nothing more than a screen to present chosen views." The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually "think outside of the (Jewish) box." --Michael Santomauro

Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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How Joe Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks

 

Subject: How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks

TPM DayBreaker December 2, 2010

Our top stories for Thursday:

How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks

Early this week, after hacker attacks on its site, Wikileaks moved its operation, including all those diplomatic cables, to the greener pastures of Amazon.com's cloud servers. But today, it was down again and mid-afternoon we found out the reason: Amazon had axed Wikileaks from its servers. Read more »

KY Gov. Beshear Unveils Plans For Creationist Theme Park Complete With Full-Sized Ark

Aqua Buddhists need not apply: Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) on Wednesday announced a plan to construct a "creationist theme park." Read more »

FAIL: Senate Dems' Unconstitutional Mishap Could Kill Food Safety Bill

In what amounts to an epic constitutionality #fail, Senate Democrats may have blown their chances to see their food safety bill signed into law. Read more »

Sen. Bennet Caught By Mic: 'It's All Rigged' (VIDEO)

Whoops, hot mic. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) was caught by a microphone on the Senate floor Tuesday, telling a colleague "this stuff's rigged" and badmouthing his party's strategy for the lame duck session. Read more »

Another RNC Official Exposes Fundrasing Fails

Michael Steele's Republican National Committee is leaking frustrated officials like a sieve. For the second time since the Republican Party's epic wins on Nov. 2, one of the professionals at the RNC has bailed on the committee while offering a behind-the-scenes view of a total fiscal collapse. Read more »
-- The TPM Team

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