As Naomi Klein deftly points out, there is no transparency, accountability, legality connected with the so-called 'bailout'
A straightforward concise explanation of what has happened, where we are, and what the foreseeable future holds for all of us.
Should be required reading for everyone.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Naomi_Klein_Bailout_multitrilliondollar_crime_scene_1118.html"Naomi Klein: Bailout is 'multi-trillion-dollar crime scene'
"We were all reassured that there was going to be transparency, accountability, legality," Klein stated. "But now we’re finding out that, in fact, Henry Paulson has achieved his original goal by stealth, because there is no accountability, and lawmakers are very hesitant to challenge this. ... Essentially, what the Bush administration has done is said, 'We dare you to challenge us and be responsible for the Great Depression.'"
Klein sees three areas of borderline illegality. The first is that rather than being used to get banks lending again, the bailout money "is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers."
The second is that, without Congressional authorization, "the Treasury Department pushed through a tax windfall for the banks, a piece of legislation that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the US government."
The third problem, which dwarfs the $700 billion bailout itself, is that "there’s another $2 trillion that’s been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don’t really know who they’re handing the money out to, because, apparently, it’s a secret."
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