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POPSAmerican Casino: A Documentary About the Home-Mortgage Crisis more @ clip source the Cockburns meet one guy in "American Casino" who understands the whole mess better than most, a California real estate investor named Jeff Greene who smelled the end of the housing bubble around 2006 and bet $1 billion against the mid-decade exuberance of Wall Street. Sitting in his walled and gated beach compound in Malibu, Greene calmly tells the camera that the opportunity for his successful hedge bet (which has yielded $500 million so far) involved massive pain for millions of homeowners.
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POPSDems Feel Michael Moore's Wrath But then things get interesting -- in building his indictment against the ill-fated marriage of Wall Street and Washington, Moore zeroes in less on Phil Gramm or other GOP string-pullers than he does on White House economic adviser Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Sen. Chris Dodd. Especially Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Moore gets an on-camera interview with the mortgage officer who handled the special VIP loans provided to Dodd and other big names, which have dogged Dodd's reelection bid. Dodd had appeared to be clawing his way back onto safer political ground in recent months, as he filled in for the dying Ted Kennedy as chair of the Senate health committee. But if "Capitalism" packs them in in Wallingford and Danbury, watch out.
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POPSendgame for gramm? this is very interesting- this article also states his wife Wendy helped pull of the Enron shenanigans as well
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POPSOFF WITH HIS HEAD--PHIL GRAMM IS A GREEDY CRIMINAL Is it conceivable that this “knowing crime,” so widespread within the UBS enterprise, was unknown to Vice Chairman Gramm—even though it primarily involved U.S. tax evasion, and he had been hired by the company because of his expertise in American law, some of which he helped to write? As Gramm said when he was hired in 2002 by UBS, the position “will provide me with the opportunity to practice what I have always preached. I have been involved in every major financial debate since I’ve been in the Congress.” Phil Gramm lost his position as the co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign when he blamed the recession not on the banking deregulation he championed but rather the people of the United States, which he described as a “nation of whiners.” But that was a sideshow compared with the serious charges now swirling around UBS, charges that may finally prove to be Gramm’s undoing.
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POPS25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
Rebubbacans and Ayn Rand disciples abound. Kathleen Corbet Corbet ran the largest agency, Standard & Poor's, during much of this decade, though the other two major players, Moody's and Fitch, played by similar rules. By slapping AAA seals of approval on large portions of even the riskiest pools of loans, rating agencies helped lure investors into loading on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that are now unsellable. Dick Fuld steered Lehman deep into the business of subprime mortgages Lehman even made its own subprime loans. The firm took all those loans, whipped them into bonds and passed on to investors billions of dollars of what is now toxic debt. Marion and Herb Sandler In the early 1980s, became the first to sell a tricky home loan called the option ARM. And they pushed the mortgage, which offered several ways to back-load your loan and thereby reduce your early payments, over the next two decades. pocketed $2.3 billion when they sold their bank to Wac
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POPSThe Dirty Dozen Meet the bankers and brokers responsible for the financial crisis - and the official
The Maestro HENRY PAULSON WAS CEO of Goldman Sachs (1999-2006); Treasury secretary (2006-2009) WHAT HE DID Pushed for end to debt restrictions for banks like Goldman, then arranged big bailout for Goldman. WORST MOVE TARP proposal just three pages long; made his decisions "non-reviewable." NOW SAYS "I don't think we've made mistakes on the major decisions." The Big Loser DICK FULD WAS CEO of Lehman Brothers (1993-2008) WHAT HE DID Piloted Lehman to largest bankruptcy in U.S. history; earned $22 million the year firm went bust. WORST MOVE Tried to avoid lawsuits by selling his $13 million Florida home to his wife for $100. NOW SAYS Feels "horrible" about Lehman, but insists his management was "prudent and appropriate." Mr. Too Big KEN LEWIS IS CEO of Bank of America (2001-present) WHAT HE DID Created ultimate too-big-to-fail company, buying up Fleet, MBNA, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. WORST MOVE Failed to catch a $15 billion loss at Merrill before buying the
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POPSObama’s Toxic Advisors Read this article carefully. Is Obama so eager to be surrounded with ‘experience’ in his cabinet that he is over looking what that particular experience cost us as a nation, or is there a hidden agenda? Allow me to speculate: If someone in the 1990’s, or earlier, was to formulate a plan to create a ‘One World Order’, with either America at the head or a committee of international leaders, surely a major stepping stone in achieving this dream would be to control the world’s financial markets. The best method to take over these markets would be to first crash them to the point that they would need help to become solvent again. A group of nations, say for example the G20, would step in to take over the markets, thereby “saving the world”, and appointing themselves as the de facto leaders in this “One World Order”. Next step, would be to formulate a one world currency to make it easier to control. Call me paranoid but too many signs are pointing in this direction.
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POPSRepublicans had big role in economic meltdown Now that Obama has been elected and has the task of cleaning up the mess the Republicans made, these same Republicans are now the self-approved experts on how to get out of this financial mess. As Obama stated several weeks ago, he and the Democrats won the election because the American people were fed up with the Republican ineptitude. In six weeks, President Obama has acted more responsibly than Bush did in eight long years.
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POPSEconomists Back Obama's Stimulus As always, the GOP's view of economics are Hooverish and insane. Even some Republican economists agree: "I think it's a reasonably well-designed package," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for forecaster Moody's Economy.com and a former adviser to the presidential campaign of Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain. "I would make the package bigger . . . increase the package to over $1 trillion," Zandi said. Of course, McCain himself is opposed , but he was never known for listening to his advisers. Well, other than Phil "nation of whiners" Gramm .
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POPSThose that helped cause this mess. Once again, UK media looks further than their advertisers to explain the truth. Interesting read. But, just like our "experts", totally ignoring the millions of good paying jobs off shored for higher tax revenues from mega-corporations and cheaper socks for sheeple.
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POPSDon't blame deregulation Indeed, exactly contrary to Obama’s claims, the repeal of Glass-Steagall has helped to counter the current crisis. It allowed Bank of America to buy out Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase to buy out Bear Stearns, and Barclays Bank to work on buying up the remains of Lehman Brothers. It allowed investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to take up refuge as bank holding companies. If investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had diversified more into commercial banking, taking commercial deposits — as the Act’s repeal made possible — that might have provided them with the superior capital cushions needed to survive.
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