Obama's Historic Presidency - Harvard Must Clean Up the Yale Mess

On the abs and shoulders of newly elected Barack Obama comes the most daunting task of his historic presidency which is cleaning up the legacy (mess) that 20 straight years of Yale grads as president has bestowed on us. The last Harvard grad to undertake such a challenge was John F. Kennedy 48 years ago.

In 1636 Harvard was founded and in 1701 Yale was founded and ever since these two Ivy League competitors have been at each other's throats whether it was in founding a nation, creating the game of football, distinguishing themselves as the educational elite of America, charging the highest tuition in the nation to attend, or just capturing the presidency.

Almost a year ago I wrote an article called "Presidential Election 2008 - Harvard versus Yale" . The stunning recent success of Yale in capturing the presidency the past 20 years and nearly for an additional 8 with Hillary capped a long and dominant run by the Bulldogs. In every election since 1972 either a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate or both were from Yale and the 20 year domination beat out the old record held by Harvard and Franklin Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was elected four times himself, meaning Harvard had the muscle to change the Constitution and have a president elected more than twice to keep a favorite son in office. He served into his 13th year before dying and had been elected to serve 16 years. Yale controlled the White House the last 20 years with three different presidents, Bush, Clinton and Bush 2.

Now before we all become overly enamored with the power and success of the Ivy elite remember that Harvard, the venerable 372 year oldest university in the nation still has the dumbest mascot ever adopted by a school in America while the Yale Bulldogs must explain away the legacy of the past 20 years. Oh yes, and only once in history has someone been president who graduated from both schools, our very own George W. Bush, leaving both with much to explain.

As for the Harvard mascot, for those of you who don't know and the Harvard Crimson has worked very hard to conceal the fact, the university mascot is a real person, John Harvard, a puritan clergyman from England in the 1600's. A statue of John Harvard, sculpted by Daniel Chester French, sits in Harvard Yard at Harvard University. Despite its name, the statue does not depict the true likeness of John Harvard, as the sculptor had no accurate image to work from.

The statue, known by Harvard tour guides as the statue of three lies, claims that it depicts John Harvard, Founder, 1638, but in reality Harvard was a contributor, not the founder; the institution was founded in 1636; and the statue is actually a likeness of someone else as French used a student as a model. What Harvard did do was leave the first major endowment to Harvard along with his library thus immortalizing the value of endowments over academics. The current mascot is a hideous distortion of the original John Harvard who wasn't John Harvard to begin with but some student.

Obama is the 8th Harvard grad to serve as president from colonial days after John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and George Bush. John Adams was vice president under George Washington for two terms before being elected the 2nd president of the USA in 1797.

Yale has given us 5 presidents with the first being William Howard Taft who was not elected until 1908, 111 years after the first Harvard president. Following Taft were Gerald Ford, George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton and George Bush, Jr. all in the past 35 years.

The current Yale legacy, Iraq, Afghanistan, the credit crisis, Wall Street collapse, auto company collapse, insurance industry collapse, in fact the whole economic collapse, the extreme negative attitudes toward our elected officials, financial leaders and media, the negative attitude of the world toward America, corruption, oil crisis, terrorism and all the other stuff is certain to be the biggest challenge to Harvard since the great depression and World War II inherited by Franklin Roosevelt.

We can only hope and pray that Barack Obama can clean up the Yale mess and maybe even get the Harvard mascot finally changed during his historic presidency, something even the Adams, Roosevelt's and Kennedy failed to accomplish.

The Economic Meltdown - Where do we go from here?

If you were a regular reader of the Coltons Point Times or previous work by the editor you would be a lot richer than you are today. Since the '70's we have predicted the economic, stock market and housing fluctuations, trends and crashes with unusual accuracy from the oil manipulations of the '70's and 2007 and 2008 to the real estate mess in the early '80's and 2007, from the dot com meltdown of 2000 - 2002 to the interest spiral of the late '70's.

For years we have warned you of the conflict of interest of the "industry analysts" employed by Wall Street to influence stock prices. We listed the billions of dollars in fines paid for fraud and corruption in the financial and pharmaceutical industries and watched with awe as Congress passed the $700 billion bailout to save the same firms. Over and over we warned that there was nothing "free" about our free market system that is being manipulated by sources far more powerful than our government.

Wall Street and Madison Avenue, the financial and advertising centers of the universe, have joined forces to brainwash and spoon feed the American public with seeds of greed, obsession with materialism and disregard for laws and authority. Here we are today, a new president, a Democratic congress, and an inspired electorate yet the same architects of our current economic chaos are firmly in control of both the present and new administration.

Nearly a trillion dollars in bailouts have already been approved by Congress and our new president, a second multi-billion dollar bailout will be approved before Obama is even sworn in as president. House Speaker Pelosi is meeting today with the auto manufacturers and union leaders to decide on a second 25 billion dollar bridge loan. Barney Frank has promised just about everything to everyone while Pelosi is treating the Treasury as an endless pit of money and our new president may not even have a voice in what takes place.

Make no mistake, Madison Avenue convinced us we must have everything and Wall Street served it up through the maze of financial tricks of the trade and no one bothered to ask do we really need all this stuff. No one bothered to wonder why car companies were making more money off repairing your new car than selling it as "planned obsolescence", in other words making cars that would break down, became a bigger profit center.

Our FDA has turned its head to the proliferation of new drugs from an industry used to charging about 10 to 20 times the fair market value for prescriptions. Tens of billions in fines have been paid by the same pharmaceutical firms for fraud, price fixing, and bribes to doctors and hospitals. Yet Congress wants to expand our already broken and highly corrupt health industry to provide unnecessary medical care and drugs to everyone.

Many consumer product companies are in serious trouble because people did the only thing they could to survive the financial disaster, they stopped wasting money and started saving what little they had left. That is a very good thing but will extend a recession for those interested in bailing out Wall Street. Our media became dependent on advertising dollars that no longer exist so watch for television, radio and cable stations and networks dependent on advertising to start going under.

Our internet firms like Yahoo, Google, E Bay and millions of small businesses on the net will see their value collapse even more as the ad money dries up and as people realize that internet advertising really is the most over-valued method of reaching people with an undiluted message. Credit card fraud, cell phone fraud and identity theft flourish as a result of the internet and the failure of anyone to protect the consumer from such predators. Automated banking will be the next victim of the internet.

Entertainment companies including the record industry are operating with a broken business model and have had to resort to corruption to make money. The five largest record companies in America have paid tens of millions of dollars in fines recently for bribing radio stations to play records and now over 600 radio stations are under investigation for corruption. The record industry is beyond fixing and must collapse.

Many of the very industries our Congress is saving have no business in a free market economy where innovation, quality, service and competition are supposed to be the dominant attributes. Right now we reward fraud, corruption, greed and unfair business practices. How long is the American public going to continue to support the industries with their money and support their protectors (Congress) with their votes? The day of reckoning is at hand.

Obama versus McCain or Goldman Sachs versus The Rothschilds

A Clash of the Titans for Control of the Presidency

News the media won't report!

Did it ever occur to you that perhaps your vote really doesn't matter because whatever happens in America is being orchestrated by more powerful sources? Few people understand the power and financial influence of two of the most powerful international financial houses in world history and it may very well be they are heavily involved in cutthroat competition for control of our next president. Yet the media has not even begun to question the relationship between these international bankers and our candidates for president.

Well they should before it is too late. Some would argue it may already be too late as the Congress, the White House, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and the two candidates have already joined forces to adopt the most comprehensive bail out of Wall Street and the banking community every seen in American history and followed it with similar action in every major nation throughout the world.

While Congress and the candidates talk about a $700 billion bailout that was necessary to save the economy, the Federal Reserve and Treasury were quietly adopting new programs and regulations to provide direct assistance to the financial markets bringing the total bailout to nearly $3 trillion. As if that is not enough, the Democratic leadership in Congress also intends to offer a future bribe to the taxpayer of another $300 billion stimulation program if Obama gets elected.

How in the world did the Democrats and Republicans, the liberals and conservatives and the media of this nation all agree to such a massive commitment to save the very institutions that cheated, committed fraud, bent regulations and out-smarted the best minds in government and finance? How did people with opposing philosophies who were bitter political rivals bury the hatchet in the midst of one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history, just a few weeks before the dramatic climax?

Well perhaps the quiet involvement of Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds may explain as these global powerhouses have been getting their way with governments since long before most modern governments even existed.

In 1750, 26 years before the American Declaration of Independence the Rothschild family began their journey to become the most powerful financial family in world history and though to this day the vast majority of their holdings are privately held, estimates of their family holdings are as much as $167 trillion dollars. Strategic actions over the 258 year continuous evolvement of the Rothschilds has led to control of much of the world supply of gold, oil, diamonds and many other assets.

As for Goldman Sachs, they were founded in 1869, shortly after the end of the US Civil War and at the dawning of the industrial revolution in America joining yet another family firm still around today, J.P. Morgan whose work to save the Union during the Civil War earned it many privileges during the explosion of growth in America including the opportunity to finance the Rockefeller Standard Oil empire with Rothschild money.

In time the three factions would appear to undertake the most intense competition between them for control of the global financial system ever seen but in the end, though all three groups remain the sole survivors today in terms of American influence, it became known that Morgan was serving as a front for the Rothschilds in order for the Rothschilds to maintain a low profile in America. But low profile or not they dominated what happened and how it happened.

As for the involvement in this election cycle, Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds have again taken on each other with the Rothschilds jumping onto the McCain bandwagon late in the campaign while Goldman Sachs has been imbedded in the Obama campaign since the beginning. While the Rothschilds have seemingly played a much smaller role in McCain's efforts much remains to be disclosed of the Goldman role with Obama.

This much can be reported. Back when Obama was a freshman candidate for Senator he was selected to be keynote speaker for the Democratic national convention in 2004. A nobody from Chicago was plucked from midair and cast into the most important slot in the convention. How he would up there remains to be revealed.

Just a little over one year after being elected as a junior senator, in 2006 Obama was the featured guest before a private gathering of the Goldman Sachs executives in Chicago, an honor unheard of for someone that politically insignificant, speaking before the most powerful financial firm on Wall Street and one of the most powerful in the world. This was quietly reported in Bloomberg News.

It was the launch of his presidential campaign and Goldman executives soon gave over $800,000 to jump start the Obama presidential bid along with collecting millions of dollars from their fellow Wall Street firms and clients. Oh yes, Robert Rubin became the Obama economic expert, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Billionaire Warren Buffet became his most trusted economic advisor, a man who was to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs in the height of the economic meltdown. Yet Buffet was also a personal guest of Lord Rothschild at a private conference at his English estate.

The story only gets better. On May 3, 2007, Barack Obama attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan that was not on his public schedule and is only now surfacing. The exclusive private dinner was for Goldman Sachs traders and featured a discussion on issues by Obama moderated for the Wall Street firm by NBC's Tom Brokaw. Once again the circumstances are strange as a year later Brokaw would be moderating the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain and the economy and Wall Street were the main points of discussion. Of course the debate commission and McCain were unaware that Obama and Brokaw had already held a practice session the year earlier.

Then comes the financial meltdown which can be traced back to a couple of major events. The first major change to the regulatory framework that opened the door to Enron and the sub-prime crisis occurred in 1991, when Goldman Sachs, through a subsidiary called J. Aron, argued that even though it was an investment bank it should be granted the same exemption given to commercial traders in the commodity markets because it was in the business of buying commodities as a middleman. It was granted by the CFTC.

A second turning point came when Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, that formally allowed investors to trade energy commodities on private electronic platforms outside the purview of regulators. Critics have called this piece of legislation the "Enron loophole," saying Enron played a role in crafting it. In the months after the act was passed, private electronic trading platforms sprang up across the country, challenging the dominance of NYMEX.

Investment banks like Goldman's had been frustrated with the established exchange because they really were never able to get control of it according to Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former staff member at the CFTC. The new law allowed them to create a private trading platform. The most successful of the private platforms was InterContinental Exchange, or ICE, founded by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and a few other big brokerages in 2000. ICE soon opened a trading platform in London, allowing its founders to trade vast quantities of U.S. oil overseas without being subject to regulation. This opened the floodgates to oil price speculation.



Suddenly comes the current economic chaos and the president calls a meeting of Congressional leaders, Treasury, Federal Reserve staff and the presidential candidates. Obama, who was staying away from Washington during the crisis got the call and at the meeting he spoke about economic issues that reportedly had been prepared by the Republicans and was being reviewed by Treasury yet wound up in the Obama campaign. Of course the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen was a former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs as is the new head of the $700 billion Treasury bailout program.

Do we really know anything about the long term relationship between Obama and Goldman Sachs other than their massive fund raising for him? Since he has been secretly guided and financed by Goldman people from the very beginning of his presidential campaign were they influential in his economic platform? Obama never questioned the role of Goldman in the sub-prime fiasco nor in manipulating the oil futures prices. When Goldman specialists tried to drive the price of oil up to $200 a barrel this year Obama never said a word.

Long before this time the Goldman Sachs Foundation had quietly channeled funds to Colin Powell's new group, America's Promise and Powell himself was collecting honorariums from $50,000 to $100,000 for speaking to various groups including Goldman sponsored events. At some point between the time he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then left government, only to come back as Bush Secretary of State, Powell acquired between $1 million and $5 million of stock in giant defense contractor General Dynamics, a firm in which the Roshschilds have extensive ownership. Powell eventually would be converted from a McCain financial contributor and friend to endorser of Obama in less than a year.

As for the Rothschilds and McCain, it was not until this year that they held a fund raiser for him in London hosted by Lord Jacob Rothschild and his son, Nathaniel Rothschild in the posh London Spencer House on March 28, 2008. As I said at the beginning, the Rothschilds are the oldest, biggest and most powerful of all financial houses and have long chosen to remain in the background while other firms fronted their interests.

Although they compete with firms like Goldman they also cooperate often on international mergers and acquisitions, have been partners in the oil futures exchange, and recently both sought to expand their influence in Asia with the Rothschilds selling a 20% interest in one of their companies to the Bank of China. The Shanghai and Hong Kong-listed commercial bank will pay $341 million for the stake in the French arm of the La Compagnie Financière. It is the first strategic investment by a leading Chinese bank in the eurozone.

In spite of being foreign based the Rothschilds have been one of the chief beneficiaries of the economic crisis in America as J.P. Morgan and Barclays, firms with significant equity held by the Rothschilds, were able to gobble up Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual in sweetheart deals for a fraction of their asset values in the midst of the crisis.

So what control do we really have over the election, over the president and over the Congress? We know control has been lost of the economy, of world trade and of international finance. Most government institutions seem to be operating at the whim and call of the financial giants. Can we expect more after this election? Is America for sale to the highest bidder and is Obama's $500 million campaign the highest bid? All this bodes ill for the liberal, left wing groups and unions rallying around Obama as they may very well be discarded when they have served the purpose of winning the elections.

The Big Bailout - Free Market Socialism or Government Regulated Capitalism?

Somewhere between the wildly vacillating stock market, the global economic response and the confusion in Congress there is a presidential campaign nearing a conclusion. As the market soars down 2,000 points one week then up 1,000 the next day and governments around the globe step in to fix crisis after crisis it is no wonder the American public has no clue what just happened. Well certain aspects of the market have been repaired and a lot of manipulation has been covered up. The American public will now be a major shareholder in banks and other companies and a whole lot of hidden losses by the greed mongers will be paid off by the feds.

What price did we just pay for stabilization of the stock market? Did we just take a giant leap into the abyss of Free Market Socialism or Government Regulated Capitalism, either of which has never been a part of the American capitalist system? Even more important, did it fix the problems? Since the raid on the US Treasury went so smoothly don't be surprised if more demons of past behavior don't surface in the near future that also have to be addressed to save the struggling economy.

What hasn't been done? For one, the Congress and other elected officials must be banned from taking campaign money from all special interests from the corporations of Wall Street to the labor unions. This bailout is the best evidence yet that campaign contributions from those with a conflict of interest have no place in America. Beyond that lobbying by any group or organization benefiting from any of the many packages to bailout Wall Street or Main Street must be prohibited. Blood money from lobbyists has contaminated our political process to a degree never seen before. Does anyone think Congress and the new president will have the guts and honesty to do this?

Second of all, why has there been no discussion of the hidden debt or losses already incurred by the Wall Street titans in terms of unregulated derivatives and swaps I have discussed in previous articles? I believe there are about $62 trillion more in hidden losses directly attributable to greed, a level of losses far greater than what we have already dealt with in this crisis. If I am right, the economy could go into a severe recession or even depression and if the losses are any larger the consequences could be unimaginable.

In an earlier article about the resilience of the American economy I said the rest of the world cannot afford to let us fail. Recent events demonstrated just what I meant as a problem in the American housing market nearly destroyed the world economy. Perhaps I need to rethink my conclusion as we just were witness to a world teetering on the brink of economic destruction because of a little greed in the way mortgages were approved. It just might be that the world no longer has the ability to help America if we collapse and the interdependence of world markets and speed of world communications will bring down everyone within days.

One thing is certain, our economic system and congress are permeated with people who hold greed to a higher standard than honesty, with people who believe taking is more important than giving, and with people who place far more faith in the almighty dollar than the Almighty God. The foundation of our nation's existence is that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights. We are a nation that puts "In God We Trust" on currency and "One nation under God" in our national anthem. Somehow the Christian values so important to the formation of this nation have been lost in Washington, in Wall Street, in the media and in the overwhelming desire for more power, wealth and control.

What could happen? Read Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged and you will see as the mysterious John Galt led the disappearance of the little people who were the foundation for the wealth accumulated by the rich and greedy and all the puppets who served them. Fascism, socialism and communism were all targets of her failures of civilization and a couple of them could still be around today. Come to think of it, after the great nationalization efforts this dark October things may not be all that different.

Hey Wall Street - Enough is Enough! Or Did You Already Bet on Obama?

In yet another slap in the face to the American consumer the greed mongers on Wall Street have gotten everything they wanted from the President, the Congress, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the international central banks, even the two candidates for president Obama and McCain and still they refuse to release the trillions of US dollars they are hoarding while continuing to hold the economy hostage.

Over two trillion dollars in American pension savings have gone up in smoke this year as the forces behind the government have manipulated and raped every treasure trove they could find to protect their precious credit, line their pockets, and demonstrate to the government just who is in charge of the US economy. Such behavior almost borders on criminal if there were any laws that existed to prosecute the predators of lower Manhattan. But thanks to the millions of dollars in special interest contributions poured into the campaigns and pockets of our elected officials no such laws exist.

Is it just circumstance that only two investment houses survived the economic meltdown this year and gobbled up all their competitors, two firms now sitting on billions if not trillions of our funds? Is it circumstance these firms have the power to call accounts in other companies, in other words demand early payment, when there is no money to be had thus driving those competitors out of business?

Is it circumstance that the survivors, Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan owned and controlled the London energy futures market used to drive up the price of oil and devastate our economy and that of the world? Well is it circumstance that these companies have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of our elected officials and both were the primary beneficiaries of stunning government actions to rescue the economy?

As of August 31 according to the Center for Responsive Government Barack Obama had raised about $460 million compared to about $230 million for McCain. Obama is the first federal candidate in our history to refuse public financing even though he pledged to take the public financing which would have greatly reduced his spending in the campaign.

Goldman Sachs temple in Wall Street.

So what financial interest did Goldman Sachs have in Barack Obama? Since the beginning of his campaign the boys at Goldmans have been the biggest contributors to Obama and helped bring in millions from the Wall Street establishment. Goldman executives alone have given Obama $739,521 and have helped raise the following from Wall Street firms for Obama. CitiGroup - $492,548, J P Morgan - $475,112, UBS - $419,550, Lehman Brothers - $391,774, Morgan Stanley - $341,380 and various amounts from Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

What could be Obama's fascination with Goldman Sachs? Well it goes back as Bloomberg News reported Obama was the featured speaker at the Goldman's annual partners meeting in 2006 in Chicago. This was a junior member of the US Senate who had not even been in office two years yet he was speaking to the top executives of one of the most powerful investment houses in the world. There is something very strange about the circumstance.

The story only gets better. On May 3, 2007, Barack Obama attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan that was not on his public schedule and is only now surfacing. The exclusive private dinner was for Goldman Sachs traders and featured a discussion on issues moderated for the Wall Street firm by NBC's Tom Brokaw. Once again the circumstances are strange as a year later Brokaw would be moderating the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain and the economy and Wall Street were the main points of discussion. Of course the debate commission and McCain were unaware that Obama and Brokaw had already held a practice session the year earlier when Obama was facing a withering attack from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the democratic primary.

Now that is three most unusual encounters between Obama and Goldman Sachs. Then comes the economic chaos and the president calls a meeting of Congressional leaders, Treasury and Federal Reserve staff and the presidential candidates. Obama, who was staying away from Washington during the crisis got the call and at the meeting was the only person to talk about a Republican alternative proposal for the crisis, a proposal that had not even been made public at the time.

Former Goldman CEO and now Treasury Secretary Paulsen.



It was later learned that a Treasury staff member reviewing the confidential proposal from Republicans was able to smuggle the information to Goldman Sachs employees who emailed it to Obama staff and it was given to him before the White House meeting, thus enabling him to pre-empt McCain from offering the new Republican proposal. Of course the Secretary of the Treasury was a former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Do we really know anything about the relationship between Obama and Goldman Sachs other than their massive fund raising for him? Since he has been secretly guided and financed by Goldman people from the very beginning of his presidential campaign were they influential in his economic platform. While he now admits things have changed and many of his proposals might be delayed or dropped, he still proposed a tax on the rich which would seem to be opposed to the Goldman executives.

Yet it was convenient that Goldman faced billions in losses from the sub-prime mortgage mess and they helped trigger the economic collapse with the manipulation of oil futures driving the world into a credit crisis, a crisis that helped them make billions of dollars through spiraling oil prices. Most convenient of all, the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan was approved just before a new president was elected so the new president would not be blamed for anything that went wrong.

Obama never questioned the role of Goldman in the sub-prime fiasco nor in manipulating the oil futures prices. When Goldman specialists tried to drive the price of oil up to $200 a barrel Obama never said a word. His meetings with them over the years were in secret and his actions were a wall of silence as the boys from Wall Street destroyed the economic system forcing a historic bailout by Congress that gave Wall Street nearly unlimited access to the US Treasury. Now did all of these incidents slip his mind as well as if his secret meetings with Goldman had nothing to do with the economy. I hope he can explain to the public just what has been going on and what, if anything he promised them in return.

Is Wall Street Arrogance To Blame for Failures in Congress?

Today the Wall Street bailout failed in Congress. Immediately after the financial experts on television began threatening yet again that the public is too dumb to understand the problem and as a result there will be no money for mortgages, autos, credit card purchases and other needs of Main Street America.

The financial experts went so far on CNBC to say the people in Congress are limited to liberal arts and law degrees and have no understanding of the economy and that is why the bailout failed. One day the many people whose lives and pocketbooks are lined by their close relationship to Wall Street may wake up and discover their own arrogance is what is fueling the public opinion revolt against them in their efforts to raid the public Treasury.

Long ago the general public stopped paying attention to idle threats from those demanding access to the Treasury to solve all the problems of the world. The international banking cartel and financiers from around the world have made run after run on the U.S. Treasury since the days of the American revolution to the Civil War to the latest crisis resulting from the mismanagement and greed on Wall Street.

Clever public relations people hired by them told them to stop talking about Wall Street and keep talking about how their problems are really the problems of Main Street but the American public knows better in spite of the public relations efforts. Today's problems on Wall Street were caused by greed, incompetent government regulation, Congress looking the other way while the financial institutions lined their pockets and campaign treasuries, and the expectation that the taxpayer could be hoodwinked into covering their losses.

Now the American taxpayer is expected to pay $700 billion to buy all the "toxic" loans that were issued by banks and mortgage companies and have resulted in a tightened credit market. What in the world makes them think the public should buy all the toxic loans and bail them out of their mismanagement and greed? If Wall Street had not started meddling in the mortgage market by packaging sub-prime mortgages when they saw how much money could be made in real estate we would have no crisis.

So they get caught with a couple of trillion in worthless mortgages and decide the American taxpayer has a responsibility to bail them out or they will cut off credit to Main Street. Where I come from that is not a request for help but blackmail. Then they say the financial integrity of our 401k, IRAs and pensions are in jeopardy if the bail out is not approved. That is second degree blackmail. The only way our pension money could be threatened is if the thieves on Wall Street invested it in the crooked stocks to begin with. Of course they did.

A reasonable way to help Wall Street while protecting the federal Treasury is possible and maybe now that the stampede to action has been halted by the vote in Congress perhaps the arrogant experts on wall Street who are demanding the handout can simply ask the stupid public for help in a nice and honest way and maybe this time they will get it.



Perhaps most important, the financial elitists and their liberal apologists had better learn humility and take responsibility for the mess we are in that they caused. Their days of unlimited feeding at the public treasury are over. The public has no responsibility to pay them for the mess they made and if we do give help, then we have every right to prosecute them if they violated the law. As for the financial television channels, turn them off, there are far better ways to spend the day.

Hijacking of American Economy Stopped by the People

Bush Pelosi Obama bailout of Wall Street fails!

To the absolute amazement of Wall Street and the weak-kneed Democratic leadership the people of America spoke through their elected representatives and the takeover of America by Wall Street was brought to a screeching halt in a stunning vote today.

Obama who refused to consider the negotiations over the vote worthy of returning to the capitol but remained available via telephone found out just what Americans thought of his "call me if you need me" attitude. No one called him. Pelosi called the Republicans "unpatriotic", hardly a way to encourage cooperation.

In the end the strange alliance of Bush, Obama and Pelosi to save the money mongers on Wall Street and help pursue our course toward socialism got, well, bushwhacked. Obama ran from his leadership chance while Pelosi again demonstrated why she has no business acting like a leader.

The American public, overwhelming against this Wall Street bailout and unwilling to use public dollars to reward corrupt corporate executives were finally heard by the Republicans in Congress and about 94 Democrats opposed to their own leaders bitter partisanship attacks. If just 11 votes were needed to pass the bill why did Pelosi lose 94 from her own party?

For the moment the world witnessed the real strength of the American political system. No political party nor Wall Street is going to steal the banking system from public accountability nor hijack the American economy. Our Constitution remains intact and our country remains the strongest light in the world toward a true nation devoted to "We The People."

Who really Controls America? The US Government or Big Money?

This past week has seen an amazing display of courage by some and arrogance by others as the economy has tried to stabilize after the incredible series of events including fraud, mismanagement, manipulation and greed that has contaminated the US economic system.

Take for example the case of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks on Wall Street and in the world. For months their financial analysts have been downgrading banks, investment houses and companies driving stock prices down while at the same time other Goldman analysts have been driving the price of oil futures through the roof as explained in a recent CPT article.

A little over a week ago an analyst from Deutsche Bank in Germany downgraded the rating and value of Goldman Sachs citing exposure of the banking giant to credit weakness. He was joined by another analyst from Oppenheimer & Company. The result was a 6% drop in the stock value of Goldman the same day from a previous high of $178.00 to $167.30.

In the next few days analysts from Ladenburg Thalmann and Thomson Financial joined the field downgrading Goldman who thought they had avoided public notice of their credit problems. By Wednesday, August 20 shares in Goldman went for $158.25, a loss of $20 a share in little over a week.



The next day Citi Investment Research projected additional asset problems for Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley due to credit problems yet to be reported by the giant firms and the stock dropped to $156 a share, a loss of $22 per share and a bit too much for the Goldman gang to stomach.

The next morning Goldman declared the price of oil, which had dropped to $114 per barrel from $149, would spike back up to $149 before the end of the year in what could be considered a last desperate attempt to stop the downward spiral of their stock and drive it back up. Of course Goldman is one of the largest traders of energy and oil stocks in the world and a temporary oil price spike might help refill the coffers.

Oil did indeed spike the next day by an astonishing $6.00 a barrel, a huge daily profit for a firm that might have a few trillion dollars at play on oil futures, while the stock market was being driven down nearly 400 points in two days because of the credit crisis. Fortunately, after one day of temporary insanity on Wall Street a calm Warren Buffett was on television Friday morning telling the world a whole different story and the stock market shot up 200 points while the oil price had the largest one day loss in years, over $6.00 to completely wipe out the Goldman hike of the day earlier.

Goldman has made the following oil price forecasts this year. December 2007 oil projected to reach $105 in 2008. May 2008 oil projected to reach $141. June 2008 oil projected to reach $200 by year end. August 2008 oil projected to reach $149 in 2008. Oil did indeed reach a record high in 2008 being pushed to $149 a barrel and driving gas, diesel and heating oil right through the roof.

The huge houses like Goldmans might have made billions in profits on oil using a variety of strategies like ownership of the futures market, commissions off stock sales, and a host of alternative financing schemes outside the regulatory control of the government including institutional funds and swaps. For the first time this year Goldman did not get its way and drive up the price of oil for longer than a day. One can only hope they were in and out of the market fast enough to make a killing overnight or their own strategy might have backfired and cost them in futures contracts.

Now who really controls America? Did I mention that as of August 22 Goldman Sachs people have given $456,702 to the Barack Obama campaign and $174,820 to the McCain campaign. Before you think Obama receives twice as much money from financial institutions as McCain consider this. During the entire campaign people from the financial sector including Wall Street have given a total of $22.4 million to Obama and $21.6 million to McCain. I wonder how they classify that investment?

Here is how Goldmans rewarded employees last year and what they will be missing this year. The following appeared in a New York Post story by Paul Thorp, December 19, 2007.

Toiling at profit powerhouse Goldman Sachs is so lucrative that even a secretary's bonus can exceed Gov. Eliot Spitzer's whole $179,000 paycheck.

As the Wall Street giant yesterday celebrated its fourth-straight year of record profits - despite a general wipeout at most banks - Goldman Sachs was also jubilant over the record bonuses it's handing out in early 2008.

Overall, Goldman will pay employees a total $20.19 billion in pay and bonuses, or an average $661,490, up nearly 23 percent from $16.46 billion a year ago.

While the average is only a statistical snapshot, the real bonus packages - to be distributed in the first quarter of next year - are equally impressive, ranging from around $3,000 for a mailroom clerk to $20 million for top bosses.

"It's not unusual for an administrative assistant or a secretary of a very senior person to get more than $200,000," said Alan Sklover, a compensation lawyer who represents Wall Street executives.

"There's a great value for someone who gets you on the plane in the middle of the night and plans your daily life," he said.

"The higher up the boss, the bigger the bonus for his support staff, which at Goldman Sachs is often paid by their bosses of out of their own bonuses."

With Goldman the envy of Wall Street as the only bank awarding any big bonuses, the formula of how the $12.1 billion pot of bonuses alone is distributed is based on two principles: favoritism, and how much profit your department generated, experts said.

A junior trader who helped Goldman keep ahead of the rest of Wall Street rivals could expect to get a bonus of between $500,000 and $2.2 million - on top of their regular pay. A more senior trader would get up to $3 million or more.

CEO Lloyd Blankfein is expected to reap up to $70 million in pay, stock and bonuses.

"Its hard not to be a Goldman executive and walk away a multi-millionaire," said Sklover.

Why Not Warning Labels for Financial Experts?

One thing the federal government can do is require warning labels for anything that is, may be or could be hazardous to the health or safety of the citizens. They are expert at it with the dozens of alphabet soup agencies forcing manufacturers to slap notices on the labels or to disclose warnings when doing television commercials.

Haven't you all heard the dozens of warnings for different drugs. When they finish their outrageous lists you wonder how anyone in their right mind could ever use the damn stuff. Some even say the product "may" help a few people even if most can't be helped. I think that it a little crazy.

Still, the FDA, CPSC, DOA, ICC, SEC and FTC among countless others have developed quite a reputation for warning us about everything under the sun. Some prescription bottles have longer warnings than product information.

So it occurred to me that there is nothing worse for your mental or physical health than getting wrong advice on what to do with your money. It seems every bank, brokerage house, investment banker, stock broker, 401 K advisor and anyone out there telling you what to do with your money should have a warning label because every one of them have been wrong in the past year or two.

The wild predictions of spiraling oil prices up to $200 a barrel, skyrocketing inflation, a total collapse of the housing and credit markets, massive foreign trade deficits, and horror story after horror story intended to drive the market up or down any particular day depending on whether the source of bad news is buying or selling are just too much.

These people have been instrumental in causing our home values to fall, our stock portfolios to dissipate, our retirement funds to evaporate and our economy to nearly collapse. Isn't it about time the feds label them for what they are, a danger to our health and well being?

Maybe it should read like the following and be required on their news articles or over their picture if they are on television?

DANGER: The following is from a proven mental minimalist whose motivation is toward their own funds, bonuses, buyouts, and bosses with no regard to the fool consumers listening to them. These people are idiots and so are you if you do what they say. Ignore them or burn in hell with them!

Who Will Fall Next? Banks and the Credit Crisis

So who are the largest investment banks in the world?

1. Bank of America
2. Citigroup
3. JP Morgan
4. HSBC
5. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
6. Royal Bank of Scotland Group
7. ING Group
8. Credit Agricole
9. Wachovia
10. BNP Paribus SA

How about the top brokers in the world?

1. JP Morgan Chase & Co.
2. Goldman, Sachs & Co.
3. Citigroup
4. UBS
5. Bank of America
6. Lehman Brothers
7. Merrill Lynch
8. Morgan Stanley
9. Bear Stearns
10. Credit Suisse


Finally who are the largest banks in the world?

1. UBS AG - Switzerland
2. Barclays - UK
3. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group - UK
4. Deutsche Bank AG - Germany
5. BNP Paribus SA - France
6. The Bank of Toyko Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. - Japan
7. ABN AMPRO Holding NV - Netherlands
8. Societe Generale - France
9. Credit Agricole SA - France
10. Bank of America NA - USA
11. JP Morgan Chase Bank National Association - USA
12. Banco Santander Central Hispano SA - Spain
13. Unicredito Italiano SpA - Italy
14. Credit Suisse Group - Switzerland
15. Citibank NA - USA
16. ING Bank NV - Netherlands
17. Bank of Scotland - UK
18. Fortis Bank NV/SA - Belgium
19. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation - Japan
20. HSBC Bank plc - UK

Notice the names appearing on all three lists? How about the fact that four of the top 20 banks in the world are UK, three from France, two from Switzerland, two from the Netherlands, and one each from Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium. Hummm, 15 of the 20 largest banks in the world are from Europe.

So there is a concentration of wealth but also a concentration of credit exposure. So far these banks have lost billions of dollars from investing in the US sub-prime mortgage market and the credit crisis but do we really know the scope of the crisis?

Losses of nearly $400 billion have already been written off from sub-prime mortgages. A confidential study by Bridgewater Associates, the second largest hedge fund in the world expects total losses from the credit crisis to reach $1.6 trillion, yes trillion. That is four times the current staggering losses.

One of these major players has already gone under (Bear Stearns) and more can be expected if the credit losses approach that level. In fact one of the major players, Fortis Bank, expects a collapse of the US financial markets with 6,000 US banks filing bankruptcy and major corporations like General Motors and Citigroup becoming victims to the US financial meltdown.

Very quietly 7 US banks have already gone bankrupt this year but are we prepared for a massive meltdown? Today the Bush administration announced we face the largest budget deficit in history. Oil prices are out of sight and housing prices are collapsing. Perhaps the meltdown is already well underway.

Of course many of these institutions are on the earlier list I published of the financial institutions that have paid billions of dollars in fines for fraud, price fixing and other economic high jinks that used to land you in jail but now just get you a slap on the wrist and a tax deduction.

Many of these banks already recovered billions of dollars of losses with their manipulation of the oil futures market so maybe the projections of Fortis have to be updated by adjusting them for the billions of dollars already stolen from the citizens of the world at the gas pumps.

Will we ever reach the point where our financial institutions won't have to steal, manipulate and defraud the public in order to cover their losses from creative stock frauds which should never have happened in the first place if the government regulators were doing their job? Stay tuned for Armageddon.