Friday, April 15, 2011

OBAMAnation: LA RAZA ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS TAKING OUR HOMES - What's Left? OH, WE GET FREE TICKETS FOR OBAMA'S PERFORMANCES OF "CHANGE"!


MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

*

Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico are EVERYWHERE.

*

20 YEARS OF CORPORATE RAPE AND PILLAGE UNDER BUSH, HILLARY, BILLARY, BUSH and their WAR PROFITEER & GENEROUS DONOR, DIANNE FEINSTEIN…. NOW THE PILLAGE IS BEING ACCELERATED BY A RED-CARPET ADDICTED CLOWN, NAMED HISPANDERING BARACK OBAMA!



*

One year since the US bank bailout

3 October 2009

One year ago today, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and authorizing the use of $700 billion in Treasury—i.e., taxpayer—funds to bail out the banking and finance industry.

The creation of TARP inaugurated the greatest plundering of the public treasury and transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial elite in history.

One year later, the analysis of the World Socialist Web Site that the bank bailout was part of a fundamental and permanent restructuring of American capitalism, whose central aim was the impoverishment of the working class, has been richly vindicated.

While the Obama administration points to an astonishing rally on the stock market and a revival of bank profits to proclaim an end to the recession, the working class is being devastated by near-double-digit unemployment, falling wages, pensions and health benefits, the collapse of family savings, record home foreclosures and a precipitous growth of homelessness and hunger. Even as they tout the “recovery,” government officials warn that unemployment will remain at the highest levels since the 1930s for years to come.

The passage of the TARP legislation was the culmination of three weeks of closed-door crisis meetings between government officials and Wall Street bankers, combined with a public propaganda campaign depicting the bailout as the only alternative to an immediate descent into another Great Depression.

On September 7, the Bush administration announced the government takeover, at a cost of $200 billion, of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The following weekend, after round-the-clock meetings with Wall Street CEOs led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (now Treasury Secretary) Timothy Geithner, the government refused to provide emergency funds to Lehman Brothers, allowing the Wall Street icon to collapse.

No credible explanation for the decision to deny funds to Lehman while rescuing Merrill Lynch and the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) has ever been offered. It is now clear, however, that this move reflected the conclusion that nothing short of a massive diversion of public funds to cover the bad debts of the banks could protect the wealth of the financial oligarchy. To create the political conditions for such an unprecedented action it was necessary to deliberately stoke up an atmosphere of panic and fear.

Lehman, the smallest of the Wall Street investment firms, was sacrificed for the greater good of the financial aristocracy. Not coincidentally, the chief beneficiary of the disappearance of Lehman and Merrill Lynch was the largest investment bank, Goldman Sachs, which Paulson had headed prior to entering the Bush administration. As for the rescue of AIG, Goldman, its largest trading partner, stood to lose at least $20 billion if the world’s largest insurer of bank assets went down.

The following weekend, once again in talks conducted behind the backs of the American people, Paulson handed congressional leaders a four-page blueprint for a $700 billion bailout of the banking system and demanded that they immediately enact it into law. On the evening of September 24, Bush went on national television and, in apocalyptic terms, insisted that if Congress did not quickly pass Paulson’s plan “America would slip into a financial panic.”

The official line was that the bank bailout was being undertaken with the greatest reluctance and for the benefit of “Main Street,” not Wall Street. Barack Obama, then the Democratic presidential candidate, immediately declared his support for the bailout, and Democratic leaders in Congress were its most vociferous backers.

The eruption of the financial crisis and the rush to enact TARP coincided with a remarkable improvement in Obama’s electoral prospects. Prior to the crisis, Obama’s campaign was foundering. His lead in the polls over his Republican opponent, John McCain, had evaporated and his campaign was in visible disarray.

But with the events of early September came a sharp shift in the media in his favor. A political decision had been taken at the highest levels of the ruling elite that the implementation of a massive bailout of Wall Street combined with sharp attacks on workers’ jobs and wages and an offensive against basic social programs would be politically more difficult under a McCain administration than an Obama White House.

Obama’s relative youth, his ethnic background and his Democratic brand could be utilized to confuse and disorient a public that would overwhelmingly view a McCain administration as the continuation of the policies of the hated and despised Bush. A clear consensus emerged within the ruling class to push for the election of the tribune of “change you can believe in.”

They could count, moreover, on the Obama enthusiasts within the middle class liberal and ex-radical milieu to provide much needed political cover for a right-wing Democratic administration.

On September 22, 2008, the World Socialist Web Site published a statement of the Socialist Equality Party (US) National Committee entitled “No to Wall Street bailout! The socialist answer to the financial crisis.” The statement declared:

Both the plan itself and the manner in which it is being imposed are deeply undemocratic. Exploiting the breakdown in US and global financial markets, the financial aristocracy, which is responsible for the crisis, is exercising its control over the government, both political parties, and the media to implement policies of the most far-reaching character without any genuine debate or discussion. As in the aftermath of 9/11, it is seeking to utilize the crisis to push through policies that would otherwise be considered entirely unacceptable…

Make no mistake: The working people, who are the victims of the financial parasitism of the ruling elite, will foot the bill to bail out those who have enriched themselves by plundering the social wealth. The massive expansion of budget deficits and the national debt as a result of this plan will be used to justify a brutal assault on basic social programs, education, housing and the wages, jobs, pensions, and health benefits of the working class.

Not a word of this citation needs to be changed in light of subsequent developments.

The stock market continued to fall sharply in the first weeks of the new administration, reaching its low-point on March 6. This in part reflected a degree of uncertainty within the financial elite over how resolute the Obama administration would be in protecting its interests. Such doubts were largely dispelled in the course of March, when the administration emphatically demonstrated its obeisance to Wall Street.

In rapid fire, Obama intervened to scuttle a bill passed by the House of Representatives, in response to public outrage over tens of millions in bonuses awarded by AIG, which would have imposed limits on the pay of bank executives; his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, announced a plan to offload the banks’ “toxic assets” at public expense; and Obama rejected the turnaround plans submitted by General Motors and Chrysler, demanding deeper cuts in jobs, wages and benefits and driving the firms into bankruptcy in order to carry through an unprecedented attack on auto workers.

The markets reacted enthusiastically, setting off an extraordinary stock market rally that has thus far continued, despite the growth of unemployment and trillions of dollars in “toxic assets” that remain on the banks’ balance sheets.

The forced bankruptcy of General Motors, in particular, shored up Obama’s credentials on Wall Street. It demonstrated, first, that his industrial policy would remain completely subordinated to the interests of finance capital and, second, that he would pursue a policy of intensifying the exploitation of the working class, using mass unemployment as a bludgeon to impose wage cuts and speedup.

Since then, Obama’s domestic economic policy has been focused on the drive to slash health care costs at the expense of the working class, which he himself has presented as the spearhead of a campaign to cut spending for basic entitlement programs, such as Medicare, and permanently reduce domestic consumption (of the working class, of course, not the financial aristocracy).

The balance sheet one year since the bank bailout constitutes the most telling proof of the reactionary character of the Obama administration, the class interests it serves, and the need for the working class to initiate an independent struggle for a socialist alternative to the bankrupt capitalist system.

Barry Grey

WSWS.ORG…. GET ON THEIR FREE DAILY NEWS EMAILS – NO ADS!

The new Forbes 400: Provocative wealth amidst social misery

By Tom Eley

3 October 2009

The 400 richest Americans have so far weathered the second year of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression with a combined $1.27 trillion, according to Forbes magazine’s annual list.

The total net worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans actually declined by $300 billion in 2009, down from $1.57 trillion a year earlier.

This is hardly a tale of woe. The average net worth of the 400 richest Americans was $3.17 billion, and it took nearly a billion dollars, $950 million, in order to make the Forbes list.

The decline in the fortunes of the super-rich did not result from a redistribution of wealth. On the contrary, a spate of recent statistics demonstrates an impoverishment of workers and the middle class, alongside heightening income and wealth polarization. (See, “US Census Bureau: 40 million living in poverty”)

Instead, the fall-off in the billionaires’ fortunes resulted largely from the souring and collapse of certain speculative financial ventures and the stock market.

This is what makes the fortunes of the richest Americans in 2009 so provocative—it is precisely their reckless gambling and insatiable greed that caused the economic crisis now subjecting masses in the US to a level of social misery not experienced in generations.

The obscene wealth of a tiny handful is proof of a dramatic misallocation of resources… RAPE AND PILLAGE OF BUSH, HILLARY, BILLARY, BUSH, FEINSTEIN AND OBAMA!

The combined wealth of the Forbes 400, $1.27 trillion, is greater by $483 billion than the entire “stimulus package,” the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The combined fortune of the richest 400 Americans, who comprise just .00013 percent of the population, is greater by about 50 percent than the price of the health care “overhaul” promoted by the Obama administration, which, in the name of “controlling costs,” will carry out substantial cuts in Medicare, ration treatment to the sick and aged, and force families to purchase private insurance.

The personal fortunes of three men, computer magnates Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, and financier Warren Buffett, would each have been more than enough to resolve the 2009-2010 budget deficit of the nation’s most populous state, California, which has been met through deep cuts to social programs and public education, and the furloughing of state workers.

In fact, the personal fortunes of individual Americans on the list are larger than the GDPs of a number of countries.

The fabulous wealth that the US financial and corporate elite continue to enjoy in the midst of a financial crisis of its own making is the outcome of long historical processes.

When Forbes first published its compilation of richest Americans in 1982, the wealthiest individual listed was shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig. Ludwig’s estimated fortune of $2 billion would place him far down the list today.

The list of 1982 included names such as Ford, Du Pont, Whitney, Duke, and Harriman, to name a few. These empires were associated with the expansion of US industrial production.

It is notable that on today’s list there are few whose fortunes were built up through the production of industrial goods, except indirectly through inheritance. FORTUNES MADE BY PILLAGE!

Two categories, “finance” and “investments,” provided the fortunes of 106 of the wealthiest Americans. Other major sources of wealth that Forbes identified include media, real estate, oil and retail.

*

*

ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?

GET THIS BOOK!

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

by Michelle Malkin

Editorial Reviews

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

From the Inside Flap

The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.

Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily

* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide

* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration

* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons

* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power

* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

• Hardcover: 376 pages

• Publisher: Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)

• Language: English

• ISBN-10: 1596981091

• ISBN-13: 978-1596981096

*

WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN

BY DAVID SALTONSTALL

DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

July 1st 2008

Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg

Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.



Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.



"Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy," said Jim Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC's "Mad Money."



Cramer also does not discount nostalgia for the go-go 1990s, when Bill Clinton led the largest economic expansion in history.



"It wants a Clinton like in 1992, but not a Hillary Clinton," he said. "That's Barack Obama."



For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.



It's a haul that is already raising concerns that, as the nation's faltering economy has become issue No. 1, the two candidates may have a hard time playing tough on issues like market regulation or corporate-tax loopholes.



"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The News.



Wall Street's generosity toward Obama, in particular, would seem to run counter to its self-interests.

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

Obama's Wall Street haul is not the biggest ever. That distinction belongs to President Bush, who as an incumbent in 2004 raised $10,852,696 from Wall Street interests through April that year - about $1 million more than Obama.



No comments: