here is also-good read
disgusting
just in in-tray
From: M
Sent: Wed, April 13, 2011 9:52:06 AM
Subject: Re: Comments - Week of April 11
My only conclusion would have to be that the entire American populace is on Prozac - except for those on Wall Street.
How this can happen without riots in the street and without John Mack being burned in effigy is beyond me....
Tabibi is playing politics in large part - yes, the banks got "free money" and bought US Treasuries and played the yield curve - but that is nothing new. But identifying specific individuals who know how to game the system only reinforces the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get shafted.
How's that 0.0001% interest rate at your local bank working for you?
M
rollingstone.com
SNIP:
The Macks make for an interesting couple. John, a Lebanese-American nicknamed "Mack the Knife" for his legendary passion for firing people, has one of the most recognizable faces on Wall Street, physically resembling a crumpled, half-burned baked potato with a pair of overturned furry horseshoes for eyebrows. Christy is thin, blond and rich — a sort of still-awake Sunny von Bulow with hobbies. Her major philanthropic passion is endowments for alternative medicine, and she has attained the level of master at Reiki, the Japanese practice of "palm healing." The only other notable fact on her public résumé is that her sister was married to Charlie Rose.
It's hard to imagine a pair of people you would less want to hand a giant welfare check to — yet that's exactly what the Fed did. Just two months before the Macks bought their fancy carriage house in Manhattan, Christy and her pal Susan launched their investment initiative called Waterfall TALF. Neither seems to have any experience whatsoever in finance, beyond Susan's penchant for dabbling in thoroughbred racehorses. But with an upfront investment of $15 million, they quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.
|
