American Taxpayers Should Get Ready For Rape Of The Century

Major media outlets have been full of news the last couple of days about the U.S. banking industry bailout being engineered, supposedly, by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. I say supposedly because, as people in the financial world and others on Wall Street have complained, there is as yet no substance to Mr. Geithner’s plan. The U.S. stock market dropped 5% after the vague details of this plan and the accompanying $800 billion stimulus plan to jumpstart the U.S. economy were announced in a press conference earlier this week.

The reason for this lack of confidence by investors and financial industry bigwigs – they have a very basic question that hasn’t been answered yet. Where’s the beef? Where are the details? How are U.S. banks going to get under from what looks to be trillions in toxic assets that are very likely completely worthless? This is the elephant in the corner of the room that nobody wants to talk about, and why not? Because at this point there is no answer to this question.

And until this question is answered definitively there is no plan. How are these “assets” going to be disposed of so that banks will again have positive balance sheets? The solutions floated so far have been vague and pointedly so. Somehow, someone is going to buy these “assets” for some as yet undetermined price that will allow the banks to become recapitalized and go on their merry way. But no one in the Bush administration could come up with a plan to accomplish this feat and no one in the Obama administration has yet been able to either.

And do you know why? Because there is no solution, other than to let the banks that have these toxic “assets” simply fail. Who wants to buy huge packages of worthless mortgages which is what most of this garbage is? Private investors? I think they’re a little to intelligent to buy any of this stuff unless they get it for pennies on the dollar and even then there is a high risk factor. And if they do buy these “assets” for pennies on the dollar then it doesn’t help the banks because they need much more than that to clean up their balance sheets. They simply can’t value these “assets” that low or they will be basically insolvent (which is, of course, what they technically are at this point anyway).

So who is going to be dumb enough to buy these “assets” at a price high enough to keep the banks in business? You guessed it – the American taxpayer. Why not? They were dumb enough to bail out the savings and loans in the late 80s after they went on a similar orgy of unrestrained greed, under another Republican administration, by the way, in what surely is only a coincidence. The only problem facing Geithner and Obama at this point is figuring out how to come up with the right terminology to use that can somehow bamboozle the American public yet again into paying for the greed of unprincipled financial industry executives.

And after the savings and loan fiasco, the Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and other corporate malfeasance cases, the massive bonuses paid to company executives that took government bailout money from the Bush administration just recently, the Bernie Madoff scandal – how can anyone think that there are principled people anywhere in the financial sector or even any large corporation in the entire country? The words “unprincipled” and “financial industry executives” should be inseparable at this point. Who is left to trust?

The only principle that these people live by is greed. Let me stuff as much money as I can into my pockets and damn the consequences has been standard operating procedure in corporate America since Ronald Reagan took office and to think that is going to just disappear overnight is a fantasy. These people care about nothing but themselves and now the Obama administration is going to bail them out yet again with taxpayers’ hard earned money, proving that they are no different than the administration they succeeded, regardless of all of Obama’s calls for change. The only change you’re going to see is in the names of the government officials that are going to throw tax dollars down a bottomless pit.

Just wait. If you’re an American taxpayer, and I am thankfully not anymore although my friends and family will have to suffer through this, you are about to get raped by your government once again in the cause of national interest. You will receive explanations about how large financial institutions in the country cannot be allowed to fail. How greedy avaricious predators who basically stole billions of dollars should be bailed out so that they can, most likely, continue to do what they do best –steal more.

There won’t be a shred of evidence to support any of the claims these government officials, like Geithner, and even Obama will make, but they will make them anyway and gradually enough people will believe them and the great swindle will happen. The American taxpayer will again be screwed only this time it just won’t be current taxpayers. The amount of this bailout will be so big that the children and grandchildren of current taxpayers will end up paying for this one. This is the mother of all swindles and you’re going to see it play out in the next few months so get ready for the lying and cheating to begin because it’s going to dwarf anything you’ve ever seen before.