This is something that you can read the details of on many news sites. That is not why I am posting it.
I have been beating a not so popular drum here for over a month and a half that the President has placed two foxes, Summers and Geithner, into the hen house, and, in turn, Geithner has invited more foxes in to help him keep the hen house in order.
There is nothing quite so clear as having the after the fact release today of Dr. Summers 2008 financial disclosure forms that shows, as Phil Rucker reports in the Washington Post, "Lawrence Summers, the chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees from several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations."
Not only are the amounts outrageous for giving a speech, some were paid by the very companies that have been and are being bailed out even as you read this. And all of the other firms listed stand to gain enormously IF THE SYSTEM IS PUT BACK ALMOST EXACTLY THE WAY IT WAS BEFORE.
Sam Stein, writing in the Huffington Post, includes the complete released list of recent speaking fees paid by the recipients of the bailout.
Skagen Funds, $60,300, (1/9/2008)
Skagen Funds, $60,300, (1/10/2008)
Skagen Funds, $59,400, (1/11/2008)
JP Morgan, $67,500, (2/1/2008)
Itinera Institute, $62,876 (1/8/2008)
Citigroup, $45,000 (3/3/2008)
Goldman Sachs Co., $135,000, (4/16/2008)
Associon de Bancos de Mexico, $90,000, (4/3/2008)
Lehman Brothers, $67,500, (4/17/2008)
State Street Corporation, $45,000, (4/18/2008)
Siguler Guff & Company, $67,500, (5/7/2008)
Hudson Institute, $10,000, (05/28/2008)
Citigroup, $54,000, (5/30/2008)
Investec Bank, $157,500, (6/13/2008)
Goldman Sachs, $67,500, (6/18/2008)
Lehman Brothers, $67,500, (7/30/2008)
Tata Consultance Services, $67,500, (9/21/2008)
State Street Corporation, $112,500, (10/2/2008)
McKinsey and Company, $135,000, (10/19/2008)
Charles River Ventures LLC, $67,500, (11/112008)
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, $67,500 (9/9/2008)
American Chamber of Commerce In Argentina, $135,000 (10/7/2008)
American Express, $67,500 (5/7/2008)
To refresh your memories, Chase got $25 billion, Citigroup $50 billion, and some other minor players are also listed. On top of this he made $5.2 million in salary from the hedge fund, D. E. Shaw. You will recall that the Treasury has now come up with a program to encourage to hedge and other private funds, like Shaw, to "invest and risk" their money buying distressed or toxic assets from the banks at the wonderful ratio of 7% risk for the purchasing fund, 7% by the Government and the remainder insured by the Government. Pretty sweet deal, eh?
My ire is not just that Dr. Summers made much more in one speech than me and the neighbors on both sides will make in the next year combined, or that he also made over 40 more speeches to schools, trade associations and other interest groups while he was waiting to be part of Obama's transition team, but that this is so clearly a case of putting in positons of great power men who come from and will go back to the very institutions that got us into this mess in the first place.
It is well past time that we stop saying that we need to let the President have the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because we KNOW that the President's policy is being created by the foxes to rebuild the institutions of the other foxes, their friends, that got us into this mess in the first place. And we can be confident that these insiders will get lucrative jobs in those very organizations when they leave government.
We need to take over these banks and AIG and break them up and resell them. Call it what you will. If it is socialism, so be it. It will only be a few months of socialism. But what it really is is TRUST BUSTING. And while we are at it we can seek legislation to turn the Fed into a National Bank and turn Fanny and Freddie into agencies within HUD.
Now, let's say that would not pass muster in Congress. And that we can't break up all those banks. The hell we can't. The laws are on the books to do it. What we need it the political will to throw out the foxes and replace them with people who are not beholden to these oligarchs to reinstate the oligarchy that our financial system has become. Even if we only broke up one or two of them does anyone think for a minute that will not give the President enormous leverage over the remainder?
The President is getting some bad advice and he seems oblivious to the fact that he is playing into the oligarchs hands. We need a complete overhaul, not a program of handing out Thunderbird to a bunch of financial winos.
Monte
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