Image by Beverly & Pack via FlickrMoveOn.org is letting President Obama know that it does begrudge the multimillion-dollar bonuses being paid to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, both of whose banks were bailed out by the American taxpayer.
The liberal advocacy group urged its members Thursday to call the White House to let the president know that they object to his cozy relationship with Wall Street bankers ("I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen," Obama said in the interview that raised eyebrows when it was released Thursday. "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.")Our politicians seem to be bought and paid for. Even our President - whoever it may be or what ever party they belong to - are bought and paid for. I don't meant they are taking bribes or money (some politicians may), what I mean is there seems to be a force, a power, greater then the Presidency of the United States.
It may be our corporate giants like Goldman Sachs (see our sister blog www.GoldmanSachs666.com) who seem to have enough power and influence to crash the economies of nations not to mention have the ability to hide financial transactions and data like they appear to have done in Greece.
I have always been a science fiction fan and have found much of science fiction to have become reality like the flip phone communicator Captain Kirk used in Star Trek. I have a flip communicator myself now. I also remember sci fil movies about the future where large corporations rule nations and sometimes even the world. Corporations that had so much power that they could dictate the politics and laws. Anyone remember those movies?
Those movies could be coming true as did Star Trek's communcator devices. I can see it now. Large GS signs everywhere. GS logo's on security vehicles (police forces) on para military uniforms and vehicles, our "government offices, schools and more. Is it possible that companies like GS, JP Morgan, Bank of America are working in unison to accomplish a take over? Are they part of or all of "The New World Order"? I am beginning to wonder and Obama's remarks - seemingly a flip flop on his earlier remarks call these high paid exec's "fat cat bankers". You got to wonder why the "flip flop"? Who is pulling his strings?
Who pulled George W. Bush's strings? Well, perhaps a little easier to answer there. Dick Cheney, former CEO of corporate giant - and non bid winner of most private contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan - Halliburton, was certainly a puppeteer. Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, as Secretary of the Treasury was certainly a puppeteer and now Timothy Geithner, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - a puppeteer then and now.
I have always believed that we have a "Shadow Government" running everything including our lives from behind the scenes. In the past 2 years I have found that many others not only have the same opinion but notable people have been attempting to expose them.
There is definitely a shake up occurring in our system of government and Obama has made it more clear to me then ever before. From a different political party, from a limited exposure to inside the Beltway and from campaign speaches of "Change we can believe in" he turns out to be the same as all the others before him. Nothing has changed except that the people have less and the rich - the super rich - have that much more.
As I say in the title, Right On, MoveOn.org and Move On.
Here is a reprint from the article of the email MoveOn.org sent out.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Daniel Mintz, MoveOn.org Political Action
Date: Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 11:00 AM
Subject: Tell President Obama: Huge bonuses aren't okay
Dear MoveOn member,
In an interview this week, President Obama was asked about Goldman Sachs' CEO giving himself a $9 million bonus. He called the CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, a "savvy" businessman and said the American people don't begrudge him his wealth.1
There's one big problem: Every cent of bonus money Goldman Sachs has paid out in the last year belongs to taxpayers.2 That's because of huge taxpayer supports--including $12.9 billion of bailout money funneled directly to Goldman through AIG--none of which they have any intention of paying back.
The fact is, the American people do begrudge wealth when it's taken directly out of their pockets. And "savvy" doesn't accurately describe a businessman who brought the world economy to the edge of collapse.
Can you call the White House right now and let the president know that you're outraged that big banks have returned to business as usual while the rest of the country suffers? Tell him that appearing close to Wall Street is no way to gain voters' trust that he's on their side.
The White House
202-456-1111
Then click here to let us know how it went:
http://pol.moveon.org/call?cp_id=1265&tg=638&t=1
In the past, the president has used language that's much more in touch with how most Americans see Wall Street's outsized bonuses, calling them "obscene" and "shameful."4 And he supported a 90% tax on last year's AIG bonuses.5 That's why this latest interview, where he compared the bankers who destroyed our economy to highly-paid baseball players, was so discouraging.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made clear why the president's analogy makes no sense, and why it's so troubling:
To my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn't brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.
And more specifically, not only has the financial industry has been bailed out with taxpayer commitments; it continues to rely on a taxpayer backstop for its stability.6
[The president] said some things about making compensation better tied to results--but it was framed purely in terms of stockholder interests, with no mention, again, of the damage bankers have done and the public support they still require.7
Can you call the White House right now to let the president know how Wall Street's bonuses are seen on Main Street? Tell him that you want him to stand up to bankers who think they're entitled to billions of taxpayer dollars with no accountability.
The White House
202-456-1111
Then click here to let us know how it went:
http://pol.moveon.org/call?cp_id=1265&tg=638&t=2
Thanks for all you do.
-Daniel, Peter, Kat, Ilyse, and the rest of the team
Sources:Read the Huff Post Article...click here and check out all the other media that reported on this below.
1. "What Obama Said About Those Bonuses," The Washington Post, February 10, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86435&t=4
2. "Strong Year for Goldman, as It Trims Bonus Pool," The New York Times, January 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/business/22goldman.html
3. "Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Edge," The New York Times, February 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/business/07goldman.html
4. "White House Moves Swiftly To Stem Fallout Of Obama Interview," The Huffington Post, February 10, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86436&t=5
5. "Obama Praises Bonus Tax, Looks Forward To Getting Final Bill," Talking Points Memo, March 19, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86438&t=6
6. "Clueless," The New York Times, February 10, 2010
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/clueless/
7. "Wall Street Damage Control," The New York Times, February 10, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86437&t=7
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I think move on should move on to another candidate....we have been duped...he smiles, he talks but he says nothing...even Max is frustrated and he originally believed in change!
ReplyDeleteMax Keiser Goes Mad On US Toilet Paper Deals
http://tinyurl.com/yhok3em
MoveON can't go on to another candidate. We have our President for 3 more years like it or not.
ReplyDeleteI to believed in "change" and still do. We need to change the way business is done. The only way to do so now is to hold Obama's feet to the fire and to let our Congressmen and women know what WE want.
The people must take back control and remind all of our politicians that they work for the people of this nation not the corporations. Of course the Supreme Court has pretty much re written our Constitution with their most recent ruling.
We can't "move on" - we must stay focused and demand our rights and stop paying the banksters. They are taking control of all of us. I don't want to see the day when ze GS comes knocking on our doors.
And yes, I agree that he smiles and talks and says nothing. That's the problem and we must let him know that is NOT acceptable!
They - including Obama - have forgotten who they work for even though he made it clear in his State of the Union speech which also said nothing.
I thought Jamie Dimon was a good friend of the President's...maybe too good? Do these guys have mirrors in their homes? What do they see? I know what I see...
ReplyDeleteGeithner's Lies
At a time when even relatively good mortgage portfolios were getting clobbered to the tune of 30% or more, Geithner had the gall to suggest that JPMorgan taking the first $1 billion loss in a $30 billion portfolio was a risk mitigant. The idea is ludicrous and Geithner knew it at the time.
Moreover, professionally managed garbage is still garbage so that is no mitigating factor either. Here is the pertinent quote from the article "It [Maiden Lane] was the scrapings off the slaughterhouse floor. It started with the things that were not good enough to get securitised."
Clearly the goal was not to protect taxpayers, but rather to protect JPMorgan from losses it would have had taking unsecuritized garbage on its books at full value. Instead the trash was passed to the Fed.
http://tinyurl.com/yzrqcop
Yeah he can keep smiling but this is what we are confronted with....are you next?
ReplyDeleteThe problems of the American economy are too great to be reached by traditional policies. Large numbers of middle class American jobs have been moved offshore: manufacturing, industrial and professional service jobs. When the jobs are moved offshore, consumer incomes and U.S. GDP go with them. So many jobs have been moved abroad that there has been no growth in U.S. real incomes in the 21st century, except for the incomes of the super rich who collect multi-million dollar bonuses for moving U.S. jobs offshore.
Without growth in consumer incomes, the economy can go nowhere. Washington policymakers substituted debt growth for income growth. Instead of growing richer, consumers grew more indebted. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan accomplished this with his low interest rate policy, which drove up housing prices, producing home equity that consumers could tap and spend by refinancing their homes.
Unable to maintain their accustomed living standards with income alone, Americans spent their equity in their homes and ran up credit card debts, maxing out credit cards in anticipation that rising asset prices would cover the debts. When the bubble burst, the debts strangled consumer demand, and the economy died.
"Thank you for your continued truthful commentary on the 'New Economy.' My husband and I could be its poster children. Nine years ago when we married, we were both working good paying, secure jobs in the semiconductor manufacturing sector. Our combined income topped $100,000 a year. We were living the dream. Then the nightmare began. I lost my job in the great tech bubble of 2003, and decided to leave the labor force to care for our infant son. Fine, we tightened the belt. Then we started getting squeezed. Expenses rose, we downsized, yet my husband's job stagnated. After several years of no pay raises, he finally lost his job a year and a half ago. But he didn't just lose a job, he lost a career. The semiconductor industry is virtually gone here in Arizona. Three months later, my husband, with a technical degree and 20-plus years of solid work experience, received one job offer for an entry level corrections officer. He had to take it, at an almost 40 percent reduction in pay. Bankruptcy followed when our savings were depleted. We lost our house, a car, and any assets we had left. His salary last year, less than $40,000, to support a family of four. A year and a half later, we are still struggling to get by. I can't find a job that would cover the cost of daycare. We are stuck. Every jump in gas and food prices hits us hard. Without help from my family, we wouldn't have made it. So, I could tell you just how that 'New Economy' has worked for us, but I'd really rather not use that kind of language."
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/100215_america.htm
It looks to me like Obama doesn't like the cheap seats(ie.public $) as much as the box seats( bankers $)...its all about the $ not the change!
ReplyDeleteCould Bankers Turn the Tables on Obama in 2012?
But there are growing signs Wall Street is now balking at helping Obama and according to both people who raise money for the president and the former Obama backers in the financial business, the situation is far worse than Wall Street throwing a few bucks to Congressional Republicans as the president approval rating starts to dip, as the raw numbers in the Times story pointed out.
Jamie Dimon apparently still likes Obama -- he's an unofficial adviser on finance related measures that has been widely reported, but associates tell me the "relationship" is wearing thin, particularly after the president -- sensing falling poll numbers and a public outraged by Wall Street bonuses just a year after being bailed out by the government -- endorsed a bank tax and then some reform measures advocated by his economic adviser, Paul Volcker, designed to prevent big banks like Dimon's from engaging in risky bond trades.
People who know Lloyd Blankfein now go to great lengths to point out that Blankfein was never really that infatuated with Obama -- he supported Hillary Clinton for president -- and that it was his No. 2, Goldman president Gary Cohn, who helped raise all that money for Obama. Yet, most telling is the story I received from a senior banking executive who was one of the first people on Wall Street to back Obama over Hillary Clinton back in 2007. He told me he's so tired of Obama's policies that demonize the rich that he even urged friends to give money to Republican Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy's seat and has become the margin of victory in the Republican attempts to defeat health care legislation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-gasparino/could-bankers-turn-the-ta_b_462594.html
Say goodbye to social safety net.
ReplyDeleteAlan Simpson: A Man Who Intensely Wants to Cut Social Security
It is not good news that President Obama picked former Senator Alan Simpson as one of the co-chairs of his deficit commission. Simpson is not just your run of the mill Republican. He is an extreme foe of Social Security.
One anecdote from his days as a senator should give a flavor of his hatred for the program. Back then, the preferred method for cutting Social Security among the Washington elite was to claim that the consumer price index (CPI) overstated the true rate of inflation. This matters for Social Security because the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) is based on the CPI. If the CPI was overstating the true rate of inflation, the DC elite argued that we were overcompensating Social Security beneficiaries.
http://tinyurl.com/yc6bz8d
And the oligarchies laugh
ReplyDeleteVolcker Rule looks more like hype than future law
The much-hyped Volcker Rule proposal is failing fast in the US Congress.
By James Pethokoukis
Published: 2:07PM GMT 15 Feb 2010
Paul Volcker probably isn't that surprised. The former Federal Reserve chairman joked he was "just a photo op", even after President Barack Obama's public embrace of his proposal to limit bank proprietary trading. The problem is that legislators are no longer interested in sweeping reform
Obama is so owned.
http://tinyurl.com/y8nqqsl
MORTGAGES
ReplyDeleteNew wave of foreclosures by end of 2010 is feared
About 4 million U.S. homeowners are 90 days or more delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure proceedings, Moody's Economy.com says. A federal loan modification program is helping a relative few.
A report last week by Moody's Investors Service called the Obama administration modification program's effect "underwhelming." But administration officials said the program was on track to reduce payments for 3 million to 4 million homeowners through 2012.
At the outset, banks didn't screen borrowers before giving them trial modifications, she said. "Then at the end they don't give very clear answers why they're not getting permanent modifications. . . . There's very little transparency."
http://tinyurl.com/ylr7n4z
I thought HAMP was to help you through difficult situation not create an impossible one?
ReplyDeleteno answers...just
fees, fees, and more fees
Hope Stops with AURORA LOAN SERVICES?
Here is a lady who has started a class action suit please get in touch with her. We are having all the same problems. http://www.auroraloanvictims.com/
Read the comments.....they string you along as they take your payments:
http://www.afscanhelp.com/companies/mortgage-companies/aurora-loan-services.cfm
I too have been a victim of ALS. They are vultures and I really hope that they learn their lesson one day. I really don’t want vengence for them pushing me and my family (3 kids and hubby) out of our home. I want justice. I am TERRIFIED that they will continue to do all the wrong things and me or my kids will come home one day and not be able to get in our home and all of our belongings will be gone. I SCARES ME TO DEATH! I have been reassured by the lawyers that I am working with (housing preservation in MN) that they can’t do that. But they have done so many other things that they “could not do” and so far have been able to get away with it. I have spent nearly 2 years fighting this battle and am still not finished with the fight. Possibly they are running just under the radar and can keep getting away with this brutal treatment of people. At this point, I am waiting to see if the lawyers get anywhere. I have also filed a complaint with the US Dept of Treasury and they are checking into it. Other than these things, I don’t know what else to do other than hope like crazy me and my family aren’t living in a hotel in the next few months.
ReplyDeletehttp://themortgageinsider.net/mortgage-reviews/aurora-loan-services-review.html/comment-page-18/#comments
Yes, fighting a foreclosure is a must for everyone. Most foreclosures are illegal as the plaintiff does not have "Standing" - the right to foreclosure. You may have heard about the "Produce the Note" defense which has received a lot of publicity but it goes beyond that.
ReplyDeleteThe Plaintiff must be forced to PROVE that they own the note and therefore have the right to foreclose. In most cases they cannot.
There are a handful of judges around the country that adhere to this law and rule against the "bankster" banks in foreclosing.
For more information go to www.TheForeclosureDetonator.wordpress.com. There will be some interesting info and links. This is my site as well.
Keep up the fight. The law is the law for everyone and should be dispensed equitably.
Good luck and keep fighting.
Larry, Editor
Ten times worse unemployment in the lowest class than in the highest class! Truly amazing and disheartening, don’t you think? And you can also infer that in some hard hit geographical areas the poorest people and people of color are being even more adversely impacted. And don’t think for a minute that things have really improved in 2010.
ReplyDeleteThe report summed up the situation: “A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom…of the income distribution; a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top.” People at the top remain winners no matter how bad the whole economy. Why? The wealthy Upper Class controls so much of the political system and benefit from countless government policies. They may lose something in an economic meltdown but not enough to suffer significantly.
Conversely, those at the bottom of the economic system with no political power are experiencing something as bad as the Great Depression, with no end in sight.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article17315.html
"Conversely, those at the bottom of the economic system with no political power are experiencing something as bad as the Great Depression, with no end in sight."
ReplyDeleteThis thread and all the comments left by all the "Anonymous" readers have all been very relevant and good.
However, I must disagree with the last statement in the last comment which I have quoted above.
While those at the bottom and the middle are hardest hit and going through a Depression, they ARE NOT powerless. That belief is what allows those at the top - "the elite" to continue to rape, pillage and plunder. Our voting power is stronger then their money and political influence.
If all those that are affected and sick and tired of the devastation to our freedom and our economic freedom STAND TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
More on this in today's Post.