by Amy Goodman

The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver's seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.

Tuesday, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department agreed to a massive, $85-billion bailout of AIG, the insurance giant. This follows the abrupt bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank; the distressed sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America; the bailout of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the collapse of retail bank IndyMac; and the federally guaranteed buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase. AIG was deemed "too big to fail," with 103,000 employees and more than $1 trillion in assets. According to regulators, an unruly collapse could cause global financial turmoil. U.S. taxpayers now own close to 80 percent of AIG, so the orderly sale of AIG will allow the taxpayers to recoup their money, the theory goes.

It's not so easy.

The financial crisis will most likely deepen. More banks and giant financial institutions could collapse. Millions of people bought houses with shady subprime mortgages and have already lost or will soon lose their homes. The financiers packaged these mortgages into complex "mortgage-backed securities" and other derivative investment schemes. Investors went hog-wild, buying these derivatives with more and more borrowed money.

Nomi Prins used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns and also worked at Lehman Brothers. "AIG was acting not simply as an insurance company," she told me. "It was acting as a speculative investment bank/hedge fund, as was Bear Stearns, as was Lehman Brothers, as is what will become Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. So you have a situation where it's [the U.S. government] ... taking on the risk of items it cannot even begin to understand."

She went on: "It's about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, 25 to 30 times the amount of capital. ... They had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. ... There was no transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that's what is bringing down the entire banking system."

As these high-rolling gamblers are losing all their banks' money, it comes to the taxpayer to bail them out. A better use of the money, says Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be to "save these 4 million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they're going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to [lose] property taxes, they're going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers."

Prins elaborated: "You're nationalizing the worst portion of the banking system. ... You're taking on risk you won't be able to understand. So it's even more dangerous." I asked Prins, in light of all this nationalization, to comment on the prospect of nationalizing health care into a single-payer system. She responded, "You could actually put some money into something that pre-empts a problem happening and helps people get health care."

The meltdown is a bipartisan affair. Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama each have received millions of dollars from these very companies that are collapsing and are receiving the corporate welfare. President Clinton and his treasury secretary, Robert Rubin (now an Obama economic adviser), presided over the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed after the 1929 start of the Great Depression to curb speculation that caused that calamity. The repeal was pushed through by former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, one of McCain's former top advisers. Politicians are too dependent on Wall Street to do anything. The people who vote for them, and whose taxes are being handed over to these failed financiers, need to show their outrage and demand that their leaders truly put "country first" and bring about "change."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/18-5

The democracy now lady, she has an excellent show. My problem with her is that she hits everything with light brush strokes and almost never gets to the meat of an issue. She also tends to lean hard towards the democrats platform, but you can't take away from her that she does interviews that the MSM would never go near, because she's not beholden to corporate interests...yet.

I agree that conservatives are the only hope for restoring the republic.

let's vote to keep conservatives closer to the national conversation and not further away in spite.

One step in the right direction does not have to be considered languishing in ambivalent complacency.

straight talk is needed and action must walk out the talk.

nobama 2008

I disagree 200%. I don't want a third term of Bush. THINGS NEED TO CHANGE!!!

Well, if you're looking for straight talk, then you need to avoid both of the MSM candidates.
McBama hasn't come correct, period.

Conservatism needs to be brought back into the discussion and not the Bush crowd farce that is NeoConservatism either, that craps way more destructive than anything a "liberal" could ever do.

OMg they are the ones that got us into this mess in thefirst place

all good except the assumption that Mc Cain is pandering to the middle and adopting neocon doctrines.

i see a man that is pragmatic and works across the aisle and still does his own work while working with others to advance the discourse of the public good.

he will never be effective from the fringes. None of them are.

His vociferous response to Bush's apathy and neglect concerning the US Soldier in Iraq brought about Patreaus' leadership and command of the incountry situation.

the sunnis capitulated and stopped the civil war and grounded the shia, as though they might just inherit the levers of power known best to them in Iraq, (seeing that Sadaam's apparatus was sunnis and not the shia), by working WITH the US Military and not AGAINST the US Military.

Take what we get to work with.

Without Mc Cain making a big stink, the sunnis would not have realized that their interests were better served in dying for their country.

The US MIlitary can never leave, because we know all too well that the sunni have a hidden agenda.

get used to it.

meanwhile, Mc Cain has proved that he puts "country first".

he is what we have to work with.

It is that simple.

nobama will only act at the behest of his handlers. he has shown in his brief and tumultuous entrance into the national conversation that the globalists will trample this country even sooner and that is not a solution to resisting globalism, but advancing it.


nobums with bidets 2008

McCain didn't know the difference between the Sunni's and the Shias.

mccain sold out the the same Bush gang who smeared him as a manchurian candidate. five minuts of googling would prove this

if you think thats bad, wait for McCains answer of "Sunshine and Friends"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUZwL9GPcNw

It seems though Ron Paul would be the man of the hour. Its to bad we do not have a viable third party. The dems and the pubs have got a lock on it and both are sold out to the globalsits

We have a winner! Unfortunately.

nope.

the neocons are not conservatives, they are hijackers of the conservative voice.

much the same as the extremists on the left are not representative of the generosity and benevolent compassions of the better judgement found in most democrats who love this country and want to bring a better life to others and contribute their charity through a thoughtful and comapssionate governance that has an economy of scale capable of doing more good than independent and decentralized efforts.

But still, this republic is losing it's greatness as this nation erodes the principles upon which this great nation was founded.

It is not nastalgia that moves conservatives to restore the nation, but the imperative evidenced by the unproductive and ineffective machinations that have been imposed upon this great nation through inept legislation by misguided and shortsided attempts to remedy long term problems with short sided solutions.


The conservative discourse is mired in the cnfusion of the hijackers' hidden agendas.

We can fix this.

We shall.

The world is watchig, but the world is not our justification for acting in our best interests.

We do this because it is just and prudent to do it.

nobama 2008

I agree with that, however, aren't you supporting McCain, who is surrounded by Globalist NeoCons?

You don't strike me as someone who is manipulated, so are you just that antiObama?

I have said this before.

I am pragmatic and a jaded cynic, war.

Of course McCain is suurrounded by neocons and globalists. He is in the middle of the national conversation.

No one gets anything accomplished by being an island.

His vast experience has a motive.

Newt saw it in Palin.

This is no accidental last minute ditch in the weeds because there is no wind under his wings.


Mrs. Sarah Palin is not merely a married woman with small children; she is an American with a brilliant grasp on how to get in the fire and stay calm and get things done, whether or not any agrees with her motives and agenda.

The fact of the matter is that mcCain sees this brilliance too, and respected newt Gungrich's influence enough to see past her personal life and reah into her heart as a great American with the capacity to do great things for the good of this nation through mentoring and discipleship and grooming for leadership.

this a bigger picture at stake, and brave men like McCain exhibiting the boldness and confidence to drive this nation into the future and let the future, which will become the past soon enough, be the measure of of the witness that the American people will have of this national treasure, named Sarah.

Some of us can see past the racial and sexist angst in this country and be the best we can be as a nation.

This is a very pivotal time for this nation.

This moment in the national conversation is unique.

It shall not be overlooked.

The left is jealous and will destroy the opportunity for the sake of seizing power at the expense of the largesse of the American people.


That will not happen as they seek it to happen.

America is better than that.


you are worth the effort.

so am I.

so is all peoples of the world.


let him that has eyes to see and ears to hear, use them, and judge with the conscience the nobler principles and plant them irrevocably in the heart with actionable response.

I realy disagree about Sarah Palin she is the perfect puppet for the globalists, no experience and dependant on a media image. She hasnt impressed me in the least in any of her controled interviews. we are doomed

not at all.

It is like i said.....

you are just one of the ones that will understand at a later date when the future is past and the observations due that which is prologue will be that which is past.


Be glad that it will be so.

we got this.

Obama rebounds in polls as economic crisis bites by Stephen Collinson
Thu Sep 18, 12:44 PM ET



WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrat Barack Obama topped two key national polls Thursday which showed the financial crisis reverberating through the White House race and "Palin power" fading for the Republican ticket.

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The Democratic hopeful, who has been lacerating rival John McCain over his capacity to rescue the US economy, led 49 to 45 percent in a new poll of likely voters nationwide by Quinnipiac University.

In a CBS/New York Times survey, Obama was up by 48 percent to 43 percent, with the race apparently reverting to the narrow Democratic ascendency seen before two presidential nominating conventions
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080918/wl_afp/usvote

All that they saw was a pretty female working in politics. It had nothing to do with her credentials.

It was a political ploy to attempt to attract women to vote for them. They must think we are all stupid.