STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Thank You to Federal Judge Thomas C. Wheeler!

Uncovers Bush Jr/Obama Secret Bailout  of Our Corrupt/ Incompetent Financial Institutions: Goldman Sachs is Right Up there on the Top of the List!
Next in line we have Societe Generale [French Puffery] and Deutsche Bank[German Dishonesty]; and the ever-crippled Merrill Lynch. Our government’s ability to deny transparency and truth to the American public still amazes me even now.  I am grateful for the lawsuit brought by Maurice R. Greenberg, former Chief of A.I.G.[major insurer] which had received $182B in bailout money.  His lawsuit contends that the bailout was “so punitive that it amounted to an improper taking of private property by the USG under the fifth amendment.”  Whatever… its confusing because its supposed to be but the bottom line: that was taxpayers money that they were throwing around during the mega bailouts!

The numbers are ridiculous and AIG is not an innocent babe in this bail-out, it basically ‘insured’ the toxic assets, subprime mortgages of  AIG’s trading partners-Goldman Sachs; Societe General; Deutsche Bank; Merrill Lynch.  However,  what will come out of these court proceedings are the hidden truths about the malfeasance committed by our public servants: Ben Bernanke former Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Timothy Geitner [“who did not know Obama before” although Obama worked as a CIA officer for Geitner’s father, Peter Geithner, Asia Society], then President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and then, the non-banker’s banker from Goldman Sachs,  Henry M. Paulson Jr, the Treasury Secretary at the time.  Finally the American people will learn what had happened in the bailout and how our money was squandered.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I was once offered an Investment Banking job by Hank Greenberg, but I turned it down.  I hope I can explain to all of you why the bailout was so problematic and whimsical.  If anyone thinks that logic, reason or concern for the American public was involved, forget it!
So far, what the Judge has found out from the trial is that AIG was charged ‘loan shark’ rates of 14% changed to 8%. Contrast this to how the feds favored and supported ‘illegally’  Sandy Weill’s bank, Citigroup and the other aforementioned banks by charging them somewhere around 2.25 %.  However one cuts this allocation of burden,  AIG got screwed (as did their shareholders).  Thank God for guys like Maurice Greenberg, former U.S. Army Captain who became a lawyer and a mega-business man.  He didn’t get his billions by being a sweetie pie but he’s exactly what we need to expose the enormity of financial skullduggery these guys commit in the name of the USG.
Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson who have never had any experience like your present blogger in salvaging Savings and Loans Companies or banks; simply decided to place the financial, psychological burden onto AIG.  They ‘accuse it’ as the ‘insurer’ of ‘creating the banking crises’ when in fact it was the banks which deliberately gave out cheap money,  starting with Bill Clinton, passing this absurd financial scam onto Bush jr  and then Obama.

The basic premise of this lawsuit is not the money but the fact that the TRES HOMBRES (Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson) were complicit in ‘illegally shifting the blame’ of the banking crisis from the banks to it’s insurer—AIG.  In their cowardly deed of shifting the responsibility of the banking crisis from their banking-buddies to the insurer in question which had nothing to do with the ‘banking part of the crises’—these public servants committed a crime in lying to the U.S. Treasury and the American Taxpayers.  No wonder, Geithner, Bernanke and Paulson were quick to come out with a nonsensical autobiography too big to fail as they failed us,  as did our PRESIDENTS.

Why don’t we elect someone who has had business experience? Or someone who has the strength to put the country first and not kowtow to these fanatical bamboozlers who just want to cut deals favorable to their banker friends and who screw the public regularly.  Instead, we have had nothing but two incompetent Economists who were political cronies and one failed Investment Banker, Paulson, who knew nothing about M1-M2 or fiscal policies or even simple banking.

I once explained to one ignorant Liberal congressman, that Paulson was not a ‘banker’ in the classical sense of owning a bank or knowing how to evaluate risk, credit, cash flows; the answer  I got was predictable: “what’s the difference?”  This is the problem with today’s public servants, they are either crooked and greedy or they are just dumb.

I will anticipate more juicy details from this trial and hope that the media doesn’t squash it.  One thing for sure, I wouldn’t want to mess with Hank Greenberg (despite his age), he is into revenge, just ask Eliot Spitzer.