[assets flattened or confiscated]
[bodies and homeless everywhere]It's a pitched battle between the retreating good guys and the attacking bastards.
Thousands of bodies strewn about. thousands waiting to be saved, and dying in the process.
The differences-
good guys: Euro countries and EU
attacking bastards: US bankers/hedgers, ratings agencies, SEC.
Question: where are the Euro countries going? Not to the City of London, that's for sure. They should be running in the other direction.
The Euro is still under attack from the private American ratings agencies, like Fitch, Standard & Poors (ironic) and Moody's and the hedgers.
The only people who might be able to turn the tables are the US government who are investigating most of those agencies for fraud, as well as Goldman Sachs. However, the new banking law in the US is toothless.*
As it stands, the agencies can still make countries disembowel themselves. Latest gut-fest is Spain.
Downgraded to AA+.
The trick is, they (and the retail banks) let every Western government hang themselves with the rope of debt. Nobody said anything for 60 years. Now, in order to make money, the US investment bankers are scaring the sh*t out of investors about the Euro-countries' ability to pay off their debts. Maybe they're right, making they're speculating. I hedge for the latter.
What about the US and UK, baby? Hedgers can just ignore them, because they like those countries, for the time being.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (US), the body that should be putting pressure on the agencies and the hedgers, is in bed with both of them. That's how Madoff made off with the money.
Where is that money, by the way?
Check Harry Markopolos
[the man spent a decade giving data to the SEC]:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8616941.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7871217.stm
Here's what the crisis has done to the US, as a society:
A letter on Alternet
Posted by LesLeopold at 12:30 pm
May 28, 2010
The Ten Wealthiest Financiers in America Are Not Worth $900,000 an Hour
Dear Messrs, Tepper, Soros, Simons, Paulson, Cohen, Icahn, Lampert, Griffin, Arnold and Falcone,
It’s now estimated that about 150,000 teachers will lose their jobs next year because of the financial crisis touched off by your industry.
On behalf of the 3 million young people who would have been their students, I have a proposition for you: Donate 50 percent of your 2009 earnings to keep those 150,000 teachers in their classrooms. Each of you, on average, still would net over $935 million dollars for the year (you should be able to scrape by on that) — and the money you’d forgo would ensure that 3 million kids would get an education.
That the ten of you personally received $18.7 billion (not million) from your hedge fund proceeds in 2009 is quite a feat, given that it was the worst economic year since the Great Depression. You each got roughly $36 million a week — over $900,000 an hour! Meanwhile, as result of the Wall Street shenanigans you helped engineer, 29 million Americans are now without work or forced into part-time jobs.
---end (see more below)
The situations above are some of the reasons why I am (metaphorically) calling the financial and fiscal attack on civil society 'a war'. It's not a joke. These monsters have been let loose as a result of globalisation, the WTO, etc. and nobody seems able to rein them in.
I ask: How long is this polite, civilised war going to continue to destroy the very foundations of society? The hedgers have managed to make the pensions of millions of people disappear. That's quite a feat. They've destroyed companies, and put 29 million Americans out of full-time employment and, because they've tricked most American cities with their snake oil, they're slowly taking over those cities and pitching homeowners out onto the street, after having caused the banking crisis**. And, as you can see from Les, children are going without education.
Am I exaggerating?
Sorry, out of jokes for today.
Please: A moment of silence for 'society'
as it lays dying.
-Costick67 (8^Pas it lays dying.
For the rest of Leopold's letter, checkitout:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/28/an-open-letter-to-the-wealthiest-financier-in-america-youre-not-worth-900000-an-hour/
* alternet:
[WITNESS PURE CORRUPTION, FOLKS, HERE in this story- Costick67]
AlterNet / By Danny Schechter
Obama Talks a Lot of Game About Taking on Wall St, While Killing off Reforms in the Shadows: The American people are clamoring for justice but our voices are still being ignored. The President says he is on our side. Is he?
...In several high profile speeches, Obama lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.
But even as he was feinting left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right to kill off amendments that the bankers hated like Senator Bernie Sanders's proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America."
As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, "Geithner's team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats."
He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest provisions privately. [corruption!- Costick67]
No wonder bank stocks went up when the bill passed.
James Kwak praised the Obamacrats skill at political manipulation on BaselineScenario.com, "The administration is happy with the financial reform bill roughly as it turned out, and it got there by taking up an anti-Wall Street tone (e.g., the Volcker Rule), riding a wave of populist anger to the point where the bill was sure of passing, and then quietly pruning back its most far-reaching components. If anything, that's a testament to the political skill of the White House and, yes, Tim Geithner as well.
checkitout:
http://www.alternet.org/story/147041/obama_talks_a_lot_of_game_about_taking_on_wall_st%2C_while_killing_off_reforms_in_the_shadows
**Google: 'Huffington Post' 'Baltimore' 'evictions'
