Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Operation Siege, Numero Deux

UPDATE VII: Read another great article describing the nature and magnitude of the economic mess, Washington Post, Tim Geithner's Black Hole. Then reread my posts:

Economic Mess for Dummies and

Problem, Causes and Professor NoBull's Solution for the Economic Mess

Now you understand why my proposal to invalidate all credit default swaps and nationalized insolvent banks makes sense.


UPDATE VI (earlier updates below): Read The Big Picture, Backdoor Bailouts for Goldman Sachs? Also read The New York Times, A.I.G., Where Taxpayers’ Dollars Go to Die. And re-read The New York Times, Propping Up a House of Cards, in which the writer predicts that the government will spend "quarter of a trillion dollars" to prop up AIG.

The appropriately named articles confirm what I have said for sometime, the AIG bailouts are an attempt to try and save well-connected investment banks, like Goldman Sacks, the former firm of former Treasury Secretary Paulson, the focus of an initial bailout proposal that never made sense, beneficiary of over a hundred billion bailout dollars, and then a hundred billion more.

It is robbery of our future!

This is the reason for our outrage and our action.

The plan is to lay siege to the federal government, a figurative siege that is, of calls, and faxes, and emails, and letters, and demand that the government protect the treasury of our country from further looting.

The next siege will commence on Friday, with one volley, at noon CST.

The specific objective is the White House.

The coordinates are:

Address for letters: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500

Phone Numbers:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Email form: click here.

Tell them that we're not gonna take it and you want the government to protect the treasury from further looting by the robber investment banks and financial institutions.

I'm going to tell them: "Stop the bailout BULL! Protect the treasury NOW from further looting. No more money for insolvent investment banks and financial institutions."

Prepare for the siege by watching this video:



This is our banner:






















Now is time to prepare. Recruit fellow taxpayers, family, and friends.


Check back for further details.

CAUTION: Don't do anything stupid.

UPDATE: As expected, more looting of the treasury.

After a $60 billion loan, a $40 billion purchase of preferred shares and $50 billion to soak up the company’s toxic assets, Uncle Sam will quadruple down on AIG, with an additional $30 billion in taxpayer money. Read The New York Times, A.I.G. Reports $61.7 Billion Loss as U.S. Gives More Aid.

A loss of $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter, that is $465,421 per minute. "To put that in perspective, every six seconds it loses enough to pay full tuition for a year at Harvard."

"No company has cost you, the taxpayer, more money. And no company deserves it less." AIG was the enabler of the economic mess.

And Goldman Sacks, the former firm of former Treasury Secretary Paulson, was one of the enablees. All these bailouts are an attempt to try and save well-connected investment banks, like Goldman.

Time to End the Bailout Bull

Time to admit that Wall Street had just become a Ponzi scheme.

Time to kill the zombie banks and other financial institutions.

This is the reason for our outrage and action.


UPDATE II: Time to rally the peasants. Only a dozen or so have indicated that they will participate in the first siege, although I expect many times that number on Friday. If you plan to participate, please indicate in the poll on the right. I need to know some numbers in order to make the most effective use of assets.

If we don't have at least 100 declared participants, we will have to combine forces for one volley. In that case the first siege will begin at noon CST, or 18:00 (6:00 P.M. same day) GMT. (To calculate your local time for noon CST, use this time converter.)

Check back for a final update late Thursday.

And rally your friends and family to stop the looting of the treasury.


UPDATE III, MUST READ: Still not convinced. Read The Big Picture, Solvent Insurer / Insolvent Insurer about "[w]hy are the taxpayers making good on hedge fund trades gone bad" AKA the AIG bailout. There is no legitimate reason that insolvent banks and financial institutions should not be forced into bankruptcy. The only reason to bail them out is to save the stockholders. Former Sec. Treasury is one of those stockholders. He owns billions of dollars in Goldman Sachs stock. Ergo, he and other well-connected stockholders prefer government bailouts to save their investment vice bankruptcy.

STOP THE LOOTING OF THE TREASURY!


UPDATE IV, MUST LISTEN: Prefer to listen to, rather than read, the news. Then listen to NPR, Fresh Air, Simon Johnson on Bank Bailout Plan. Johnson is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The gist of what he says is that well-connected billionaires are using taxpayer money to prop up their bankrupt companies.

Therefore, I don't understand the public apathy! WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE!


UPDATE V: In an article titled The Big Dither, Paul Krugman, the newest winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, writes that when it comes to dealing with banks, the Obama administration is dithering. And the result could be an economy that sputters along for a very long time. Further, he writes, by:

"using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of toxic waste . . . most of the benefit would go to people who don’t need or deserve to be rescued.

And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it’s just not going to happen.


So why has this zombie idea — it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back — taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren’t willing to face the facts. They don’t want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it’s very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable.


But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president’s fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more. "


Time to kill the zombie banks and other financial institutions.

The Republi-Con Earmark Bogeyman

I'm not in favor of earmarks, but almost all Congressman use them. That said read CNN, Earmarks: Myth and reality. As this article states "their total dollar amount typically represents less than 1% of the federal budget." Therefore, eliminating every earmark would do little to balance the budget.

Earmarks are the new Republi-con bogeyman, a typical example of political whining. A serious political party would talk about the need for complete government structural and budget reform, what I've called GRAC.