AMERICAblog: Countrywide executives showered with even more money
jimfromthefoothills
· 1 year ago
Banking is not any other business. Their biggest liability, customer deposits bet the benefit of deposit insurance. While bankers will claim that they pay premiums for this insurance, the insurance funds are ultimately backed by the taxpayers. So much for the free economy.
If it were up to me I would nationalize banking. Irresponsible twits. How about a law that if a bank makes a claim against the deposit insurance fund then all officers and directors of the bank would be required to liquidate their personal assets.
tlsintx
· 1 year ago
more GOPer economics... John McBush does not believe in bailouts...for the little guy anyway...
Fidelity National Default Solutions, a unit of Fidelity National Information Services of Jacksonville, Fla., is one of the biggest foreclosure service companies. It assists 19 of the top 25 residential mortgage servicers and 14 of the top 25 subprime loan servicers. Citing “accelerating demand” for foreclosure services last year, Fidelity generated operating income of $443 million in its lender processing unit, a 13.3 percent increase over 2006. By contrast, the increase from 2005 to 2006 was just 1 percent. The firm is not associated with Fidelity Investments.
Law firms representing lenders are also big beneficiaries of the foreclosure surge. These include Barrett Burke Wilson Castle Daffin & Frappier, a 38-lawyer firm in Houston; McCalla, Raymer, Padrick, Cobb, Nichols & Clark, a 37-member firm in Atlanta that is a designated counsel to Fannie Mae; and the Shapiro Attorneys Network, a nationwide group of 24 firms. While these private firms do not disclose their revenues, Wesley W. Steen, chief bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of Texas, recently estimated that Barrett Burke generated between $9.7 million and $11.6 million a year in its practice. Another judge estimated last year that the firm generated $125,000 every two weeks — or $3.3 million a year — filing motions that start the process of seizing borrowers’ homes. Court records from 2007 indicate that McCalla, Raymer generated $10.4 million a year on its work for Countrywide alone. In 2005, some McCalla, Raymer employees left the firm and created MR Default Services, an entity that provides foreclosure services; it is now called Prommis Solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/business/30mi...
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
Supply-side economics on steroids….
“Is This the Big One?”
By Jeff Faux, Founder of the Economic Policy Institute
In mid-March, after anguished discussions between Federal Reserve officials and Wall Street moguls, the Fed agreed to provide $400 billion in new cash loans to banks and investment firms. Days later came the shock of eighty-five-year-old Bear Stearns going belly up. In an unprecedented deal, the Fed immediately lent JPMorgan Chase the money to buy Bear Stearns, taking suspect mortgage-backed paper as collateral. Bear's stockholders had already taken a hosing when the stock crashed. The big winners were the company's creditors and insurers, who were saved from the consequences of their bad business judgment.
The money quote (pun somewhat intended):
We are now staring into the abyss. The Bear Stearns bailout has created a presumption of a safety net under any major stockbroker, in addition to any major bank. Rumors are that Lehman Brothers and Citigroup may be next. The Fed could handle a Lehman crash. But the collapse of Citigroup, the world's largest bank, would be catastrophic, bankrupting businesses, other banks and consumers and cutting off credit for state and local governments. And it could stretch the Fed to the limit of its resources.
“Staring the abyss” indeed – until these recent unprecedented moves by the Fed to bail out Bear Stearns, the Fed was there to provide a safety net for banks – but now the Fed has agreed to provide a safety net for Wall Street’s stock brokers – they get the profits while the American people absorb the risk.
Now, once more, with feeling -- privatize the profits and socialize the risk.
But we can’t have “socialized medicine” in America – god forbid! – because that would be un-American!
And House of Representatives wants to bust Roger Clemens for using “performance enhancing” drugs? Please! But, then, I guess it’s all really a matter of priorities. :( ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
green_libertarian
· 1 year ago
I think you'll much of the current melt down tied to the repeal of Glass-Steagle by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed by the Republican Congress and signed by Clinton in early '99, I think I have not found out what the debate was on this at the time, if it was widely opposed, and so, by whom.
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
green
You are absolutely correct that the seeds of the current meltdown were planted when the GOPers conspired with their Wall Street paymasters to repeal Glass-Steagle by passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – and it was passed in 1999 -- and signed into law by the GOPers true BFF, Enabler-in-Chief, Bill Clinton.
Actually, the most sweeping and egregious deregulation of the banking and savings and loans and brokerage houses in the 20th century took place under Reagan – again with the full cooperation and collaboration of the Democrats – and Clinton’s willingness to sign off on the repeal of Glass-Steagle simply drove the final stake into the heart of any vestige of federal regulations on the banks and protections for the public. Blinded by greed, they learned nothing from the S&L crisis!
But, hey, if you liked DINO Bill, you’re gonna’ love DINO Hill even more!
Please, just make them STOP! :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ewastud
· 1 year ago
The country is clearly being looted by the criminal elite who hijacked and run this country from the White House.
GrantinHouston
· 1 year ago
Countrywide Financial, a big player in the subprime mess, like Blackwater, hired Charlie Black's PR firm to help them with their negative images. Black, until recently a partner with Hillary Clinton's campaign PR man, Mark Penn, has just left to work for the John McCain campaign. What bedfellows!!!
Rab
· 1 year ago
This proves that repugs can't run anything financial without fraud. The MSM has bought the lie that somehow repugs are good corportate stewards. It doesn't seem like any end in sight of this crap.
aquarius2
· 1 year ago
The really insane situation here is that I heard on the local news that Angelo Mazilo, once the supreme power at Countrywide is starting a new company. This new company is being formed to restructure the bad sub prime loans. So here is a guy who helped create the sub prime mortgage mess, now forming a company to "help" restructure the bad loans. Mazilo walked away with something like 57 million and I guess he thinks there is more miliking to do in the industry. IMHO, a guy like Mazilo should be banned from EVER working in the industry he helped to destroy.
And I agree, this country is being raped by greed mongers, millions are not enough for them. Honestly, how much is enough?
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
And one more thing:
The Bush Crime Family, represented by capo Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, will introduce a “plan” – actually, “scheme” would be a more precise term of art – in which they propose the most sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulation since the 1930s.
The “plan” hands vast new and unprecedented authority to the Federal Reserve, essentially formalizing what has developed as an ad hoc process over the last three weeks.
Although the “plan” would impose the first regulation of hedge funds and private equity funds, that oversight would have a “light touch, enabling the government to do little beyond collecting information” — except in times of crisis. The problem, of course, is that the “light touch” is precisely what created the current crisis.
Consequently, the “plan” would take away what little oversight authority now rests with our elected representatives in the congress and put that authority into the hands of the Fed!
Actually, the House and Senate could have a great deal of authority to oversee and regulate the banks and brokerages if only they had the willingness to exercise it. Alas, when they do decide to take action they decide to do more harm than good, i.e. the Orwellian-named Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 – which they couldn’t have passed with out the Democrats. Where was the filibuster when we needed it?
Nevertheless, some fear that the Fed’s role in creating the current mess will undercut its ability to clean it up! Gee, ya’ think?
Putting the Fed in charge of Wall Street oversight is tantamount to inviting a bull to run amok through your china shop -- breaking and destroying everything in sight and leaving a trail of bullshit in its wake -- and then giving the bull the authority to repair the damage and clean up the mess.
Read this "analysis" piece in today’s NYT with a very critical eye and you will quickly see how the media is part of the problem by keeping the public as naïve and ill-informed as possible:
In Treasury Plan, a Reluctant Eye Over Wall Street
WTF? Where did they get that lede? A “reluctant eye” over Wall Street? How about no “eye” at all? The Treasury secretaries under Bush and Clinton, the Fed Chairman -- both Greenspan and Bernanke -- and the gutless and spineless banking and finance committees in the House and Senate have been as blind as Oedipus Rex over the past three decades – and like Oedipus their blindness is self-inflicted.
Finally, nowhere in the NYT piece do the authors even mention the real cause of the recent debacle on Wall Street and on Main Street – it’s the same cause that brought about the S&L crisis – deregulation. And Paulson’s feeble solution? More deregulation by letting Bernanke cast his blind eyes on the foxes in the hen house.
The only real solution to the current catastrophic problem is the systematic and aggressive re-regulation of the banks and the brokerage houses -- back to the levels of the 1930s when FDR stepped in after the 1929 Crash to save the bankers from themselves – and to save the rest of us in the process, and to ensure that this kind of meltdown never happens again. But, don’t hold your breath – serious re-regulation with teeth is never going to happen in today's corporate culture. :( ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
It's hard work persuading people to sign ruinous lending agreements. The predators need compensation so they can fly to Paraguay and retire to Bush's ranch. That ranch is getting bigger and bigger.
jr
· 1 year ago
We're prisoners to the haves and have mores
Sonnyboy
· 1 year ago
I understand that squatters are taking over trashed, foreclosed homes - perhaps we should call these neighborhoods "Bushville" or "Greenspan City".
hector
· 1 year ago
Giant Ponzi scheme? Not to worry, responded the Wall Street geniuses. By spreading risks among more people, the miracle of "diversity" was actually turning bad loans into good ones. Anyway, banks were buying insurance policies against default, which in turn were transformed into a set of even murkier securities called "credit default swaps" and marketed to hedge funds, pension managers and in some cases back to the banks that were being insured in the first place. At the end of 2007 the market for these swaps was estimated at $45.5 trillion--roughly twice as large as all US stock markets combined.
This huge pyramid of debt was made possible by thirty years of relentless deregulation of financial markets, culminating in the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited banks from dealing in high-risk securities. In effect, Washington regulators became passive enablers to Wall Street's financial binge drinkers. When they crashed--for example, in the savings-and-loan and junk-bond debacles of the 1980s, the Long-Term Capital Management collapse of 1998 and the Enron and dot-com crashes of the early 2000s--the government cleaned up the mess with taxpayers' money and let them go back to the bar. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/faux
aquarius2
· 1 year ago
Sarah B.
I have enjoyed your posts today. Knowledge is a good thing. :)
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
Hey, there, a-2!
Thanks for that.
I think you know that I always enjoy and appreciate your comments, too -- I always learn so much from you and various others here. And you're so right about knowledge... it's s a very good thing indeed, and communicating about it is even better.
I think it's called discourse -- no, make that civil discourse. :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
mike31c
· 1 year ago
Hmm, what a disturbing pattern that I see. I currently work for a small company that just lost a bunch of accounts because the MFIC thought it was a great idea to make cuts here and there to save $$$, and was recently given a nice bonus for saving $$$ in the short term... But totally forgetting the fact in the long term, sales numbers will be much lower because of all the lost accounts...
So in the banking world: Failure = bonus... Me thinks I need to move into banking just to get my hands on taxpayers handouts at my failures.
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
So in the banking world: Failure = bonus...
mike
Just remember the supply-side catechism:
Privatize the profits -- socialize the risk.
US Taxpayer = Corporate Safety Net
You could call it "corporate welfare" but that would be so unkind -- class warfare, really -- and the corporatocracy really hates that.
But, don't feel too bad for the haves and have mores -- because only the "little people" pay taxes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
hector
You seem to likey the piece by Jeff Faux in The Nation. That makes two of us.
Giant Ponzi scheme? Well only just.
Actually, this new brand of clever swindlers -- featuring Angelo Mozilo and the Bear Stearns Gang and the JP Morgan Chase Gang and Ben Bernanke and the Fed Gang and the Bush Crime Family capo Henry Paulson -- all make Charles Ponzi look like the owner of a Victorian pastry shop seeking sell to tea cakes and scones and clotted cream to Tom Kitten and Peter Rabbit and TabithaTwitchet and Squirrel Nutkin…for a Beatrix Potter tea party.
Sweets for the less-than-sweet. One lump, or two? :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LeslieB
· 1 year ago
Oh, and Sarah B., don't forget that Bear Stearns' CEO just cashed out for $61 million. Poor guy! You see, he would've cashed out for billions before his company went bankrupt.
Is anyone demanding he give that money to the hundreds of Bear Stearns employees? Just asking.
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
LeslieB
Yes, doesn’t it just break your heart? But let’s name him, just so we can shame him:
Now feeding on caviar and drinking Crystal at the public trough:
James Cayne, former CEO of Bear Stearns
I'm willing to bet that the fortunate Mr. Cayne doesn’t even need Ambien to sleep well at night – just a large snifter of the finest brandy will do just fine, thank you very much.
So far there hasn't been so much as a whisper that Cayne owes the employees of Bear Stearns anything other than a pink slip -- I think Enron rules probably apply here.
Sad -- and probably criminal, too, at least it would have been back in the day when the rule of law actually stood for something besides a talking point.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LeslieB
· 1 year ago
Sonnyboy 2 hours ago I understand that squatters are taking over trashed, foreclosed homes - perhaps we should call these neighborhoods "Bushville" or "Greenspan City".
They are being called Bushvilles! John Edwards may have coined the term when describing the trailer parks and tent cities forming in cities such as Los Angeles. And don't forget New Orleans, with their toxic trailers compliments of FEMA.
LeslieB
· 1 year ago
Sarah B, It really does stick in my heart! Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne should've made a lot more. Now what does he have to look forward to: laid off, company down the tubes, and he's practically a pauper. I felt really sad for Ken Lay too, especially after he screwed the entire West Coast.
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
LeslieB
I know what you mean -- how in the world is former Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne ever going to make it on a cash-out of $61 million? His lifestyle is really going to suffer.
And Ken Lay -- worthy of a Greek tragedy or an opera at the very least! -- many people still believe that Lay is still alive and residing in an undisclosed location -- but those people are just conspiracy theorists. ;) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GrantinHouston
· 1 year ago
Seems the U.S. government overpaid too many Katrina victims and now is hiring a company to collect those overpayments.
Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant.
Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.
Sarah B.
· 1 year ago
Seems the U.S. government overpaid too many Katrina victims and now is hiring a company to collect those overpayments.
Grant
OMG -- that really is adding insult to injury…and beyond!
What I want to know is where in the hell are the Democrats in the House and Senate on this humanitarian disaster?
Certainly, the Democrats in congress should be able to stop yet another army of bureaucrats and bill collectors from going after the Katrina victims with the human equivalent of trying to squeeze blood out of turnips.
All Comments
If it were up to me I would nationalize banking. Irresponsible twits. How about a law that if a bank makes a claim against the deposit insurance fund then all officers and directors of the bank would be required to liquidate their personal assets.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/30/krugman-reich/
Fidelity National Default Solutions, a unit of Fidelity National Information Services of Jacksonville, Fla., is one of the biggest foreclosure service companies. It assists 19 of the top 25 residential mortgage servicers and 14 of the top 25 subprime loan servicers. Citing “accelerating demand” for foreclosure services last year, Fidelity generated operating income of $443 million in its lender processing unit, a 13.3 percent increase over 2006. By contrast, the increase from 2005 to 2006 was just 1 percent. The firm is not associated with Fidelity Investments.
Law firms representing lenders are also big beneficiaries of the foreclosure surge. These include Barrett Burke Wilson Castle Daffin & Frappier, a 38-lawyer firm in Houston; McCalla, Raymer, Padrick, Cobb, Nichols & Clark, a 37-member firm in Atlanta that is a designated counsel to Fannie Mae; and the Shapiro Attorneys Network, a nationwide group of 24 firms. While these private firms do not disclose their revenues, Wesley W. Steen, chief bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of Texas, recently estimated that Barrett Burke generated between $9.7 million and $11.6 million a year in its practice. Another judge estimated last year that the firm generated $125,000 every two weeks — or $3.3 million a year — filing motions that start the process of seizing borrowers’ homes. Court records from 2007 indicate that McCalla, Raymer generated $10.4 million a year on its work for Countrywide alone. In 2005, some McCalla, Raymer employees left the firm and created MR Default Services, an entity that provides foreclosure services; it is now called Prommis Solutions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/business/30mi...
“Is This the Big One?”
By Jeff Faux, Founder of the Economic Policy Institute
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080...
In mid-March, after anguished discussions between Federal Reserve officials and Wall Street moguls, the Fed agreed to provide $400 billion in new cash loans to banks and investment firms. Days later came the shock of eighty-five-year-old Bear Stearns going belly up. In an unprecedented deal, the Fed immediately lent JPMorgan Chase the money to buy Bear Stearns, taking suspect mortgage-backed paper as collateral. Bear's stockholders had already taken a hosing when the stock crashed. The big winners were the company's creditors and insurers, who were saved from the consequences of their bad business judgment.
The money quote (pun somewhat intended):
We are now staring into the abyss. The Bear Stearns bailout has created a presumption of a safety net under any major stockbroker, in addition to any major bank. Rumors are that Lehman Brothers and Citigroup may be next. The Fed could handle a Lehman crash. But the collapse of Citigroup, the world's largest bank, would be catastrophic, bankrupting businesses, other banks and consumers and cutting off credit for state and local governments. And it could stretch the Fed to the limit of its resources.
“Staring the abyss” indeed – until these recent unprecedented moves by the Fed to bail out Bear Stearns, the Fed was there to provide a safety net for banks – but now the Fed has agreed to provide a safety net for Wall Street’s stock brokers – they get the profits while the American people absorb the risk.
Now, once more, with feeling -- privatize the profits and socialize the risk.
But we can’t have “socialized medicine” in America – god forbid! – because that would be un-American!
And House of Representatives wants to bust Roger Clemens for using “performance enhancing” drugs? Please! But, then, I guess it’s all really a matter of priorities.
:(
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have not found out what the debate was on this at the time, if it was widely opposed, and so, by whom.
You are absolutely correct that the seeds of the current meltdown were planted when the GOPers conspired with their Wall Street paymasters to repeal Glass-Steagle by passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – and it was passed in 1999 -- and signed into law by the GOPers true BFF, Enabler-in-Chief, Bill Clinton.
Actually, the most sweeping and egregious deregulation of the banking and savings and loans and brokerage houses in the 20th century took place under Reagan – again with the full cooperation and collaboration of the Democrats – and Clinton’s willingness to sign off on the repeal of Glass-Steagle simply drove the final stake into the heart of any vestige of federal regulations on the banks and protections for the public. Blinded by greed, they learned nothing from the S&L crisis!
But, hey, if you liked DINO Bill, you’re gonna’ love DINO Hill even more!
Please, just make them STOP!
:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And I agree, this country is being raped by greed mongers, millions are not enough for them. Honestly, how much is enough?
The Bush Crime Family, represented by capo Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, will introduce a “plan” – actually, “scheme” would be a more precise term of art – in which they propose the most sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulation since the 1930s.
The “plan” hands vast new and unprecedented authority to the Federal Reserve, essentially formalizing what has developed as an ad hoc process over the last three weeks.
Although the “plan” would impose the first regulation of hedge funds and private equity funds, that oversight would have a “light touch, enabling the government to do little beyond collecting information” — except in times of crisis. The problem, of course, is that the “light touch” is precisely what created the current crisis.
Consequently, the “plan” would take away what little oversight authority now rests with our elected representatives in the congress and put that authority into the hands of the Fed!
Actually, the House and Senate could have a great deal of authority to oversee and regulate the banks and brokerages if only they had the willingness to exercise it. Alas, when they do decide to take action they decide to do more harm than good, i.e. the Orwellian-named Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 – which they couldn’t have passed with out the Democrats. Where was the filibuster when we needed it?
Nevertheless, some fear that the Fed’s role in creating the current mess will undercut its ability to clean it up! Gee, ya’ think?
Putting the Fed in charge of Wall Street oversight is tantamount to inviting a bull to run amok through your china shop -- breaking and destroying everything in sight and leaving a trail of bullshit in its wake -- and then giving the bull the authority to repair the damage and clean up the mess.
Read this "analysis" piece in today’s NYT with a very critical eye and you will quickly see how the media is part of the problem by keeping the public as naïve and ill-informed as possible:
In Treasury Plan, a Reluctant Eye Over Wall Street
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/business/30re...
WTF? Where did they get that lede? A “reluctant eye” over Wall Street? How about no “eye” at all? The Treasury secretaries under Bush and Clinton, the Fed Chairman -- both Greenspan and Bernanke -- and the gutless and spineless banking and finance committees in the House and Senate have been as blind as Oedipus Rex over the past three decades – and like Oedipus their blindness is self-inflicted.
Finally, nowhere in the NYT piece do the authors even mention the real cause of the recent debacle on Wall Street and on Main Street – it’s the same cause that brought about the S&L crisis – deregulation. And Paulson’s feeble solution? More deregulation by letting Bernanke cast his blind eyes on the foxes in the hen house.
The only real solution to the current catastrophic problem is the systematic and aggressive re-regulation of the banks and the brokerage houses -- back to the levels of the 1930s when FDR stepped in after the 1929 Crash to save the bankers from themselves – and to save the rest of us in the process, and to ensure that this kind of meltdown never happens again. But, don’t hold your breath – serious re-regulation with teeth is never going to happen in today's corporate culture.
:(
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This huge pyramid of debt was made possible by thirty years of relentless deregulation of financial markets, culminating in the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited banks from dealing in high-risk securities. In effect, Washington regulators became passive enablers to Wall Street's financial binge drinkers. When they crashed--for example, in the savings-and-loan and junk-bond debacles of the 1980s, the Long-Term Capital Management collapse of 1998 and the Enron and dot-com crashes of the early 2000s--the government cleaned up the mess with taxpayers' money and let them go back to the bar.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/faux
I have enjoyed your posts today. Knowledge is a good thing. :)
Thanks for that.
I think you know that I always enjoy and appreciate your comments, too -- I always learn so much from you and various others here. And you're so right about knowledge... it's s a very good thing indeed, and communicating about it is even better.
I think it's called discourse -- no, make that civil discourse.
:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So in the banking world: Failure = bonus... Me thinks I need to move into banking just to get my hands on taxpayers handouts at my failures.
mike
Just remember the supply-side catechism:
Privatize the profits -- socialize the risk.
US Taxpayer = Corporate Safety Net
You could call it "corporate welfare" but that would be so unkind -- class warfare, really -- and the corporatocracy really hates that.
But, don't feel too bad for the haves and have mores -- because only the "little people" pay taxes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You seem to likey the piece by Jeff Faux in The Nation. That makes two of us.
Giant Ponzi scheme? Well only just.
Actually, this new brand of clever swindlers -- featuring Angelo Mozilo and the Bear Stearns Gang and the JP Morgan Chase Gang and Ben Bernanke and the Fed Gang and the Bush Crime Family capo Henry Paulson -- all make Charles Ponzi look like the owner of a Victorian pastry shop seeking sell to tea cakes and scones and clotted cream to Tom Kitten and Peter Rabbit and TabithaTwitchet and Squirrel Nutkin…for a Beatrix Potter tea party.
Sweets for the less-than-sweet. One lump, or two?
:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is anyone demanding he give that money to the hundreds of Bear Stearns employees? Just asking.
Yes, doesn’t it just break your heart? But let’s name him, just so we can shame him:
Now feeding on caviar and drinking Crystal at the public trough:
James Cayne, former CEO of Bear Stearns
I'm willing to bet that the fortunate Mr. Cayne doesn’t even need Ambien to sleep well at night – just a large snifter of the finest brandy will do just fine, thank you very much.
So far there hasn't been so much as a whisper that Cayne owes the employees of Bear Stearns anything other than a pink slip -- I think Enron rules probably apply here.
Sad -- and probably criminal, too, at least it would have been back in the day when the rule of law actually stood for something besides a talking point.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I understand that squatters are taking over trashed, foreclosed homes - perhaps we should call these neighborhoods "Bushville" or "Greenspan City".
They are being called Bushvilles! John Edwards may have coined the term when describing the trailer parks and tent cities forming in cities such as Los Angeles. And don't forget New Orleans, with their toxic trailers compliments of FEMA.
It really does stick in my heart! Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne should've made a lot more. Now what does he have to look forward to: laid off, company down the tubes, and he's practically a pauper. I felt really sad for Ken Lay too, especially after he screwed the entire West Coast.
I know what you mean -- how in the world is former Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne ever going to make it on a cash-out of $61 million? His lifestyle is really going to suffer.
And Ken Lay -- worthy of a Greek tragedy or an opera at the very least! -- many people still believe that Lay is still alive and residing in an undisclosed location -- but those people are just conspiracy theorists.
;)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080330/ap_on_re_us...
Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant.
Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.
Grant
OMG -- that really is adding insult to injury…and beyond!
What I want to know is where in the hell are the Democrats in the House and Senate on this humanitarian disaster?
Certainly, the Democrats in congress should be able to stop yet another army of bureaucrats and bill collectors from going after the Katrina victims with the human equivalent of trying to squeeze blood out of turnips.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~