Prins exposes the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington and shows how it led to a Wild West mentality on “the Street” that allowed the whole casino to flourish for a time.

And she follows the trillions in direct bailouts, subsidized loans and guarantees shelled out by the taxpayers when the whole thing went belly up, shining a bright light on the shadowy deals that decided which institutions would crash and burn and which others would receive the support needed to stay afloat, feast on the corpses of the fallen and then go on to the record profits and fat bonuses Wall Street’s survivors enjoy today

JH: Now, we hear a lot about the little people’s irresponsibility in all this — in the collapse. They took on more debt than they could sustain, they thought the good times would roll forever. You argue this was never about the little guy, right?

NP: Neither the crisis, nor the bailout was about the little guy. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was explicit in stating several times, and in several ways, that the government should not be bailing out homeowners who got in over their heads. And true to those sentiments, it didn’t. Instead, amidst trillions of dollars of subsidies to the industry were made available in the most original and creative of ways, and no heed was paid the jointly humane and economical solution which would have been to find ways to restructure personal mortgages and loans, as opposed to dumping buckets of money over the top layers of the financial community and promising it would somehow trickle down and loosen credit for the “little guy.”

For the money spent on subsidizing the industry, the government could have bought out every single outstanding mortgage in the country. Plus, every student loan and everyone’s health insurance. And on top of that, still have trillions of dollars left over.

http://tinyurl.com/yf5zc6b

“The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion,” said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who’s proposed a massive overhaul of the nation’s banks. “This is fraud and should be prosecuted.”

McClatchy’s inquiry found that Goldman Sachs:

Bought and converted into high-yield bonds tens of thousands of mortgages from subprime lenders that became the subjects of FBI investigations into whether they’d misled borrowers or exaggerated applicants’ incomes to justify making hefty loans.

Used offshore tax havens to shuffle its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks, often in secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean that companies use to bypass U.S. disclosure requirements.

Has dispatched lawyers across the country to repossess homes from bankrupt or financially struggling individuals, many of whom lacked sufficient credit or income but got subprime mortgages anyway because Wall Street made it easy for them to qualify.

Was buoyed last fall by key federal bailout decisions, at least two of which involved then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman chief executive whose staff at Treasury included several other Goldman alumni.

http://tinyurl.com/ycyv54e

Reflections on Throwaway Children and Teens
http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2009/11/reflections-on-throwaway-children-and.html

Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/us/26runaway.html?_r=1

“Many of their assets will be sold off in deals which ministers will present as fulfilling Gordon Brown’s promise that the taxpayer would get “pay back” for the multi-billion pound Government bail out of the sector last year.”

http://miller-mccune.com/business_economics/did-financial-rules-mandate-a-meltdown-1564

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-15-2009/elizabeth-warren-pt–1

Bill Maher 2009 05 15 elizabeth warren tarf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KssmLxoaTes

ROFL We dont know where the first 350 Billion Dollars went . ROFL

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10619982/2/regulators-seize-nine-banks.html

Bank Failure Map

http://www.thestreet.com/stock-market-news/10607062/bank-failure-map.html

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091031/oddities/iceland_economy_us_food_company_mcdonalds_offbeat

REYKJAVIK (AFP) – Noisy crowds, long queues, and traffic jams plunged McDonald’s restaurants in Iceland into a state of siege Saturday, as the chain served its final burgers on the island.

Icelanders flooded the three branches of the US fast-food restaurant in Reykjavik several hours before the outlets shut for the last time, forced to close after the island’s economic collapse caused running costs to soar.

Extra staff were deployed to reinforce the outlets, whose disappearance after 16 years means Iceland will be one of the few Western countries without a presence of the ubiquitous eatery.

Customers in one branch faced a 20-minute wait to be served and snaking lines of cars caused traffic jams at the drive-in.

“I have worked here for six years, and I have never worked as hard as in these final days,” one staff member told AFP.

Jon Gardar Ogmundsson, who heads the firm Lyst which operates the Icelandic branches, said at one point there was even a shortage of the chain’s trademark Big Mac burger.

“We are here to say goodbye,” said Orri Hreinsson, who was sitting with two friends at a table covered with 12 cheeseburgers.

Ogmundsson announced on Monday the closure of the McDonald’s branches as a result of the dramatic economic collapse last year, which pushed the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

McDonald’s requires all resources for its restaurants, including packaging, meat, vegetables and cheese, to be imported as the Icelandic market is too small to produce the required products.

Ogmundsson said the restaurants imported their goods from Germany, but costs had doubled because the country’s falling krona currency had made imports prohibitively expensive.

He plans to run the restaurants under another name in order to be able to buy cheaper Icelandic products.

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I have a hunch a Mini McDs will re-open on the US Air Force base there in the future … with product flown in from the USA. That will be it.
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Student Loan Outrage

For a year, illness left me unable to pay my bills. I owed the Department of Education for a student loan. I kept them informed of my circumstances and tried to make payments as long as I could. I usually paid double my agreed-upon sum, so the government decided double was my new contractual obligation — without clearing that agreement with me.

I was able to work very little as I recovered. The government told me it was illegal for them to hold my tax refund or garnish wages as long as I was making payments, so I made sure to do so. Lo and behold, the Internal Revenue Service held my tax refund anyway.

Neither the IRS nor the Department of Education can account for the thousands of dollars they have kept. I refuse to send them any more money until they can tell me what happened to the money they lost. And who is hurt because of that? Me and my FICO score. I hired a lawyer to help me get this sorted out. After a year, he quit because he said it was too frustrating.

Very well said. These solutions being proposed are just the illusion that government is coming to the rescue of John Q public. Would love to actually see how low prices would go if they weren’t kept overly inflated especially in Real Estate.