Monday February 2, 2009, 3:24 pm


Rep. Barney Frank plans to call the heads of major bailed-out banks to testify before his committee next week, two aides to the House Financial Services Committee chairman said.

Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, has been a vocal proponent of using federal dollars to stabilize the financial system, but has also been a harsh critic of bankers who have refused to provide Congress with information as to how the bailout funds are being used. He has also been sharply critical of the Bush administration's use of the first half of the bailout funds, charging that it failed to oversee the program properly and didn't use the funds to address the foreclosure crisis as Congress had intended.

A committee aide said that the hearing, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 11, is still being planned and that a full witness list has yet to be compiled. Frank has long promised to bring bank heads before his committee to call on them to explain how the funds have been used.

For Frank and other backers of the bailout, known as TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the problem is that its purpose is to prevent a total collapse of the global financial system. Because of the way politics works, it's difficult to get credit for preventing harm rather than doing good.

"It's like wearing dark pants and pissing down your leg," Frank said before the bailout vote in October. "It gives you a warm feeling, but no one knows you did it."

Lawmakers' hope had been that the rescue package would save the financial system from collapse and also return some liquidity to the credit market. While it has (so far) prevented collapse, lending remains at low levels.

Congress recently approved dispersal of the second half of the $350 billion in TARP funds. President Barack Obama is reportedly planning to tell Congress how he intends to spend that half once the stimulus bill has passed. Obama officials have indicated that more funds may well be needed beyond the original $700 billion.

Monday February 2, 2009, 3:27 pm

Bailout Banks Gave The Finger To The AMerican Taxpayers
Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

Monday February 2, 2009, 3:28 pm
Banker of the Day : Sky-High Arrogance: Former Citi Citibank CEO Used Corporate Jet For Luxe Family Vacation After $45 Billion Bailout

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 9:30 am
Banks are sitting on the money and just got more greedy is all that took place. Citicorp raised its interest rate to their credit card holders putting the country into more of a recession. Executives of banks are getting paid a million and more a year for "not feeling" for the people. Whereas banks could have refinanced quickly for people and families losing homes they didn't. Humanity didn't exist but greed. This greed got them into trouble and they still needed monies and took it without flinching an eyebrow and taking those homes away from peoples either way to only sell them. The answer is in eliminating greed, lower credit card rates to a fair level instead of those monsterous levels so that people can maybe afford to purchase therefor lifting the country out of a recession. No country is a pure capitalist society but a mixture of socialist, communist, and democracy. America is a mixture and shouldn't be so afraid to be tagged any name because it uses all of those types of governmental policies to try and make the country work. There are good qualities within certain types of governments. Pure Capitolism can be dangerous as proven by the current day recession. Capitolism rules banks and any loan agent which makes it more difficult on the lower and middle class person or family to live, thrive, and exist. Look at the terrible greed within student loans and the capitolistic qualities that take advantage of young growing persons who want an education. This capitolism needs to be eliminated to a certain degree to upgrade the current economic crisis. New banks need to open as well with lower interest rates, less greed and corruption, a more humanistic ideal approach to serve the people instead of deprive the people. Maybe out the luxury jets for corporate heads as well at the banks that took those bailouts. A new law should be put into place as well which discusses and explains clearly in large print and verbally the game or structure of loans and how certain loans are intended to rob people of their investments although seemingly legal but actually illegal and faulty at all levels such as sub prime loans or adjustable rate loans. People who are not learned in economics (which high school does not teach) get lured into treachery, trickery, fine print deception and that needs to be made illegal. People need to be told what they are getting into and not lied to in any way shape or form. This law would upgrade the conscience of America and make America a much more violent free, crime free Nation. The only ones who would fight this are ones who profit from deceiving and tricking people into certain types of loans. America should support lawyers for all instead of depriving people of their legal rights based on their personal inability to pay lawyers to protect and stand up for them. The middle class, lower income and impoverished are the targets and victims most of the time. The bailout to banks was useless and a huge waste. Instead that money could have been used to start new and new principaled banks. If a bank can only pay a tiny percentage of interest to those who keep their monies there why do they charge such as high interest rate comparatively on credit. Give back to the people what they invested! Stop taking and taking and allow people to thrive, use their money, earn a good interest and live well! The People's bank needs to be started that doesn't offer adjustable tricky rates or useless robbing sub prime rates and low interest on home and condo loans so people can be secure. They look to steal people of their security instead of creating security. It is fully illegal to allow a civilian to sign a contract they don't understand and the banks need to be held accountable. If a civilian cannot afford an attorney for all contracts the banks need to supply legal counseling with full disclosure as to what a loan entails and details, the repurcussions if any involved with a loan. This was corruption on the part of the banks.

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 9:40 am
The USA needs to invest in businesses that produce soley inside the USA to upgrade economic security. Depriving another of economic security is sometimes if not oftentimes the aims of the very wealthy. Good idealism and humanistic values need to supercede those of the select few who use loopholes and lack of a humanistic government to deprive people of their lives, homes, valuables, and security. Only ten percent of America's products should be allowed to be produced outside the country. This is called Independence. Too much co reliance on other nations for production leaves a huge vaccuum of jobs and security inside America. Monopolies such as Walt Mart which houses 98% Chinese made products have overtaken small businesses and the select few make those billions of dollars profits depriving every day smaller businesses from competing and surviving. This co dependence on other nations is allowing other nations to set controls on America in all ways of life which takes away its freedom and independence. It's like making a home cooked meal as opposed to a frozen old tv dinner. A good home cooked meal is what America needs. Furniture, steel, food goods, electronic parts, electronics should be mostly produced inside America. Low rate loans should be handed to only those businesses that agree to produce 90 percent inside America and those loans shouldn't be attached to someone's personal items like home, car, and toothbrush. An investment inside America is what's needed not set of fancy private jetline vacations to the select few at major banks. A new bank investment for the People's Bank.

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 10:23 am
Tho$e $ame bailed out eliti$t$ plot again$t American workers:


BAILED-OUT EXECS PLOT AGAINST LABOR BILL

Make them step down ... they voted against you!


SEIU To Call For Firing Of Bank Of America CEO, Ken Lewis
Lewis, who's facing multiple calls to step down amid the public bailout of the company and charges he destroyed the Bank's shareholder value, has
become a high-profile symbol of corporate greed, excess, and ineptitude at a time when the financial crisis

The Real Economic Stimulus

Make sure everyone understands the Employee Free Choice Act is about the economic health of America -- not a narrow, institutional issue for our labor movement.

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 11:44 am
This is a step in the right direction!! Thanks for staying on top of this, Blue.

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 2:52 pm

BAILED OUT BANK SPENDS MILLIONS ON SUPER BOWL FESTIVITIES

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 3:50 pm
Millions on super bowl? More waste, especially since we pay for that too.

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 5:00 pm
Rep. Barney Frank slaps Republicans over how they handled the bailout and the financial sector

Rep. Barney Frank slaps Republicans over how they handled the bailout and the financial sector

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 5:38 pm
* These idiots never learn: "Wells Fargo & Co., which received $25 billion in taxpayer bailout
money, is planning a series of corporate junkets to Las Vegas casinos
this month."

Tuesday February 3, 2009, 6:57 pm
Blue ~ Wells Fargo was shamed into cancelling the junkets to Vegas. The publicity and pressure is beginning to work.

Wednesday February 4, 2009, 1:41 am
Our Mister Brooks Reduks: The Rich Are Different, etc.


Today David Brooks delivers one more piece of semi-knowing, para-amusing, pseudo-droll drek offering more proof, as if any were needed, that he still, when he grows up, wants to be Tom Wolfe.

Wednesday February 4, 2009, 7:35 am
Ha, ha, ha!

Brooks has lost his mind. I'm sure the rich folks would like him to just shut up, go away...or come back with something that will help their image. The majority of us are saying, "What the...??!!!"

For someone who claims he was once a liberal and now a conservative, Brooks is now wandering in the desert and the heat is melting his brain.

This is the same character who wrote the book: "Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There." Was he writing about himself?

Have thee no shame?

Thursday February 5, 2009, 10:38 am
People CAN BOYCOTT these banks; I recently met a young woman during my train ride to Long Island and she told me she opened more than 8,0000 new accounts in a month! People were moving their money from Citibank and Bank of America ...

People are beginning to wake up ... if they're cheating you and LIVING HIGH ON THE HOG ... you don't have to patronize that business.

Send them a messae ... hit them in the wallet ... they understand that kind of a message.

Thursday February 5, 2009, 12:27 pm
"People CAN BOYCOTT these banks"

Good point. I had Wells Fargo for years, but have since opened an account with a small, local credit union.

Friday February 6, 2009, 12:50 am
The Brits have made "corporate welfare contingent on the removal of bad management." That seems a better way to go. (From a great piece in The Village Voice by James Lieber "What Cooked the World's Economy?"). Lieber said that Robert Rubin was a "senor counselor" at Citigroup and received 100 million. Leiber notes that the only place Robert Rubin should be a counselor is at Camp Grenada.

Friday February 6, 2009, 12:53 am
CEO pay isn't really where the big money is.

It's in CEO PENSIONS. And the Treasury rules say NOTHING about pension benefits.

When Edward Whitacre, for example, retired as CEO of AT&T in
2007, he received retirement -- drumroll, please -- $161 million as a
pension package -- the third highest in U.S. corporate history--not to
mention the $1 million-a-year he gets as a consultant to the company.
According to The Corporate Library, some other "parting gifts" awaiting other CEOs include the $83 million
(probably higher by now) locked in by Kenneth D. Lewis, the CEO of Bank
of America Corp., which we learned yesterday

Friday February 6, 2009, 12:57 am
In fact, sometimes, as The Wall Street Journal revealed, the pensions of CEOs, in particular those banks receiving bail-out money EXCEED the total pensions paid to the ENTIRE rest of the bank's workforce.

So, until you really go where the money is, to paraphrase bank robber Willie Sutton, we still will have Sutton-like robbery, though, unfortunately, the CEO version is legalized.

Friday February 6, 2009, 12:34 pm
Shocking. Truly shocking and abominable.

Friday February 6, 2009, 12:41 pm
"the only place Robert Rubin should be a counselor is at Camp Grenada"

Maybe George Bush can put in a good word for Rubin where he just got offered a job...

Friday February 6, 2009, 4:37 pm
NYC Madam: Wall St. Johns Paid For Sex With Corporate Cards

Sunday February 8, 2009, 9:24 pm
Naomi Klein says All of Them Must Go:

Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina."

Its message was simple enough. You--politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit--are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We--the rabble outside--are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks. What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model--this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.

It's taken a while, but from Iceland to Latvia, South Korea to Greece, the rest of the world is finally having its ¡Que se vayan todos! moment.

The stoic Icelandic matriarchs beating their pots flat even as their kids ransack the fridge for projectiles (eggs, sure, but yogurt?) echo the tactics made famous in Buenos Aires. So does the collective rage at elites who trashed a once thriving country and thought they could get away with it. As Gudrun Jonsdottir, a 36-year-old Icelandic office worker, put it: "I've just had enough of this whole thing. I don't trust the government, I don't trust the banks, I don't trust the political parties and I don't trust the IMF. We had a good country, and they ruined it."

In other countries, then, people aren't accepting the destruction with resignation, but making it clear out in the streets that they refuse to be victimized any longer. I realize Americans are fearful, but I am more afraid of what will happen if we don't do the same.

Tuesday February 10, 2009, 11:48 am
Protestors Picket Bank CEO's Homes, Offices


A new kind of street warfare is breaking out against Wall Street titans - and it's happening on their lawns and outside their lobbies too. A corps of agitators - financed, ironically, with federal-stimulus millions - is making the rounds of suburban mans

Tuesday February 10, 2009, 12:03 pm
It's just a matter of time before enough hungry and homeless citizens take to the streets. 2009 just may be that year.

Tuesday February 10, 2009, 6:00 pm
Softening everyone up, before he appears before Congre$$ tomorrow:

Goldman CEO Blankfein Acknowledges "Broad Public Anger" At Wall Street

"Anger" is putting it mildly. Outrage is more like it. Not only should Washington insist on pay caps for any firm taking taxpayer funds, but most of these crooks should be canned without any serverence. They held themselves out as the titans of finance and they skated along with unchecked greed and complete incompetence that resulted in lives in rubble across the globe.

Tuesday February 10, 2009, 9:08 pm
IN THE HOT SEAT

Wednesday February 11, 2009, 8:51 am
I'm watching the hearings now. Not one of these morons has even apologized for what they have done. Not that an apology does any good. But it would at least indicate remorse. These idiots just don't get it.

I'm also listening to a news/financial analyst (Steven Pearlstein) say the American people are wrong to be angry about these crooks. That there are things we don't understand. Lots of spin and lies. Pearlstein has no place in the public eye.

No wonder Americans are confused and outraged!!!

Friday February 13, 2009, 8:49 pm
Stimulus Package Contains Strict New Restrictions On Executive Pay
Goes Beyond What Obama Admin Imposed Last Week

Saturday February 14, 2009, 3:08 pm
These restrictions are great news!!! The morons will think twice before they rip us off again, and they need to learn to EARN their money. No productivity...no rewards.