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Monday, November 24, 2008

Citi Next Bank To Get Taxpayer Funded Handout

    to the tune of $20 billion from the Treasury. Those billions went into the purchase of some of Citi's  preferred stock. There was also some some $306 billion in guarantee's for Citi's troubled assets, which are added to the $25 billion stake in Citi which the government took back in October by way of the Troubled Asset Recovery Program..

  Just how fucking much more will you and I end up giving these crooks? Funny you should ask. Here is part of the answer for you from Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Paul Miller

  Indeed, with house prices falling after a decade-long run-up and unemployment last month hitting a 14-year high, U.S. banks face increasing loan losses on mortgages, commercial real estate and credit cards. FBR's Miller writes that the eight biggest U.S. firms - Citi, Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) and General Electric's (GE, Fortune 500) financial services arm - need at least $1 trillion in new capital to weather the coming recession without the prospect of an institutional failure. ( my emphasis )

  A trillion dollars folks! That is one hell of a lot of money to be pissing away to companies that got themselves into this mess in the first place.

  Yet, you and I will still continue paying for their greed and corruption. What a fucking waste!

Dick Cheney Should Stand Before The World Court If Anyone Should

  You all know that there is plenty of talk about what should be done about the Bush Crime Syndicate and the crimes they have committed and so on, and so on. While many of us would like to see Bush convicted in a real court of law, it is Dick Cheney who must make the first appearance.

    So let's see what some of our friends from across the Atlantic think about this. Let's see what Germany thinks.

   Watching America

Neues Deutschland, Germany
Cheney In The Dock

By Olaf Standke
Translated By Ron Argentati

20 November 2008
Germany - Neues Deutschland - Original Article (German)
The International Criminal Court is about to open its first trial. Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Dick Cheney should stand in the dock with him. A grand jury in Texas alleges the Vice-President is complicit in the abuse of prisoners incarcerated in privately run prisons. It also alleges that Cheney summarily used the power of his office to prevent an investigation of the charges. Small wonder: Cheney is reported to have invested $85 million in companies who realize most of their profits from the private prison industry.
The accusation is appropriate for the White House’s second in command who, since September 11, 2001, has been accorded presidential privileges. The former CEO of the Halliburton energy services company has been more successful than anyone else in maximizing profits from dirty political deals. He and his team laid the policy strategy as well as the legal basis for a number of crimes. The keyword list is long and includes not only the Iraq war, Guantanamo and CIA torture, but also the savaging of political opponents to the point that their livelihoods are endangered. In addition, he is responsible for the creation of “Washington insider” energy, environmental and financial policies geared toward big profits.
If anyone deserves to stand before World Court judges, it’s Dick Cheney.

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