March 21, 2008
Spitzer SubPrime and the Federal Reserve - Getting the Whole Picture
For those of you who have overdosed on Kristin Ashley Alexandra Dupre's cleavage, musical gifts and childhood home photos, we would like to offer something more substantive.
Forensic economist, Greg Palast, uncovers the more elusive story behind Spitzer's bust - the difference between buying consentual sex and raping the Treasury of the United States, once again. A mere precis, so you must read the whole article:
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
And then there is the issue of moral hazard . Ellen Goodman shows us how the term applies to poor people who were swindled and are now losing their homes, and how it doesn't seem to apply to the corporations responsible who are being rescued by the Federal Reserve and to their CEOs who are walking away from the disasters they have created with millions.
Another heist of epic proportion right under our noses.
Paul Krugman and Jon Stewart help us along with our economic education.
Photo note: A metaphorophoto - The pieces sort of fit together - You think you know what you're seeing but there's another picture which is unclear, fragmented, you can't really tell what's real and what isn't, what's transparent, reflective or opaque, kinda like what's going on with Eliot
Posted by Dakota at March 21, 2008 06:51 AM