Sanders: bailouts="socialism for the rich & you're on your own individualism for everyone else"

[tpsbmam]

The GAO audit of the Federal Reserve showed that the Fed spent $16 trillion "in secret loans to bail out American & foreign banks and businesses." And, of course, the loans were at "extremely low interest rates."

"....As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.

Some other findings:

1. Current NY Fed president got a waiver to keep his investments in AIG and GE when they were given bailout funds.
   
2. Incredibly disturbingly, the operations of the emergency lending programs were outsourced to firms receiving the bailout funds, including JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley & Wells Fargo.
   
3. Two-thirds of the contracts awarded for this outsourced work were no-bid contracts
   
4. Morgan Stanley was given the largest contract to the tune of $108.4 million to assist with the Fed bailout of AIG.

Here's a link to the PDF of the full GAO report posted on Bernie's Senate website.

[midnight]

1. Bailouts for the rich, but It's shared sacrifice for everyone else.

[elocs]

2. Evidently it's the YOYO (You're On Your Own) Party that really is running things in this country.

The rest of us are just peons and pawns.

[tpsbmam]

4. It seems the YOYO party

is another one of those fucking bipartisan deals. I was thinking today.....just idle thoughts, mind you, not intended to be a serious suggestion.....why can't we charge the lot of them with conflict of interest? There they are in Washington, all of those millionaires and billionaires, creating laws that will harm all of us and help themselves and their buddies. They're about to pass some form of this fucking Gang of Six bill and they're the people who stand to benefit from it, not us. Conflict of interest, I say!

[slipslidingaway]

3. knr n/t

[hifiguy]

5. KnR

:kick: