Sunday January 13, 2013, 3:16 pm
Secrets and Lies of the Wall Street Bailout

By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, January 4, 2013
Straight to the Source

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Politics and Democracy page.

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul - right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie - one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in - only temporarily, mind you - to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

But the most appalling part is the lying. The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue. Money wasn't the only thing the government gave Wall Street - it also conferred the right to hide the truth from the rest of us. And it was all done in the name of helping regular people and creating jobs. "It is," says former bailout Inspector General Neil Barofsky, "the ultimate bait-and-switch."

The bailout deceptions came early, late and in between. There were lies told in the first moments of their inception, and others still being told four years later. The lies, in fact, were the most important mechanisms of the bailout. The only reason investors haven't run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed. Investors may not actually believe the lie, but they are impressed by how totally committed the government has been, from the very beginning, to selling it.


>>> Read the Full Article at the site

Sunday January 13, 2013, 4:14 pm
noted, thanks !

Sunday January 13, 2013, 4:24 pm
You are welcome Roger!

Monday January 14, 2013, 11:29 am
Alot of big wigs got even wealthier at taxpayes expense.

Monday January 14, 2013, 12:57 pm
Noted

Tuesday January 15, 2013, 1:59 pm
Noted. Thanks, J.L. Matt Taibbi always explains things so well that even I can understand it. He's walked me through the messy and complicated details of the Finance Industry in the past few years so well I can even explain some things to others.

Tuesday January 15, 2013, 2:04 pm
Kudos for making that effort to learn Lois! You cannot currently send a star to Lois because you have done so within the last week.

Tuesday January 15, 2013, 2:06 pm
Good article. The vast majority of Americans are still waiting for their bailout. Maybe we all need to go to the homes of the wealthy elites and start demanding some help.

Tuesday January 15, 2013, 2:17 pm
You're reminding me of one of the marches by the NYC's OWS group to key Wall St. homes Brian. You cannot currently send a star to Brian because you have done so within the last week.

Tuesday January 15, 2013, 2:56 pm
Thanks J.L. A.

Tuesday January 15, 2013, 3:09 pm
You are welcome Mary.