Why The $700 Billion Landgrab By Wall Street Won't Work, And Other Miscellanea

America is Wall Street's bitch. It's official.

Not that anyone should be surprised.

Let's face it, the same lying cheats who created the financial swindle of the century, via now worthless CDO and CMO products, who took out hundreds of billions of dollars in profits directly attributable to the creation of these instruments (a large number of which are likely worthless, as they are backed by non-existent mortgages or the same mortgages re-used countless times), created a crisis of their own devising (by shorting those same CDOs into the ground, thereby reducing the value of the collateral value, thus creating single handedly the "credit crisis"), after lobbying hard in 2004 to eliminate rules that barred the industry from eliminating reality-based loan loss reserves and levering up to dangerous levels, have put the pork to the nation's taxpayers yet again.

Never mind that the bailout plan isn't working. Credit markets are still locked up, because the recipients of the bailout aren't doing what they are supposed to with the money - lending it out. No, instead, they are holding on to it, which is sort of the same as saying the plan never would have worked given the character of those involved. But what are they doing with all the taxpayer money they are holding onto?

See below from the UK's Guardian:

Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package

• Morgan Stanley $10.7bn
• Goldman Sachs  $11.4bn,
• Morgan Stanley $10.73bn,
• JP Morgan $6.53bn
• Merrill Lynch $11.7bn.