Wall St. opens offices & homes to those they made homeless

In a gesture meant to regain the trust of the American people, Wall Street investment firms, insurance companies, and banks are literally opening their offices to those they made homeless.

Initially, the firms were going to require people to bring in a copy of their foreclosed mortgage, pension statements, or other investments Wall Street has made worth less than the paper they were printed on. Since that proved too time-consuming for staff to process, the program has simply been opened to all the homeless though they still must bring their own blanket and pillow.

Trip Caine of AIG explains the thinking behind the program, "I and most other people I know got into finance to help people fulfill the American Dream and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so we really feel a profound sense of guilt and personal responsibility for the damage
our schemes have caused, and we wanted to give something back."

"At first, we didn't know what we could do, but then we realized we have so much space in these nice offices, and a lot of people could use it as a place to sleep at night or even crash out during the day without really getting in our way," Caine added.

Word of mouth quickly spread on the street, and grateful former members of the middle class began to find their way to the offices of AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorganChase, and others.

Some smaller firms were saddened that few arrived at their offices because of their lack of name recognition, so they started putting bumper stickers on their town cars and limos that said, "Follow me to sleep for free." Eventually, the homeless started following all limos into parking garages. Most execs don't mind if the homeless hop in their limo for a nap while it's idling outside some meeting or stuck in traffic.

One hitch that has occurred is offices widespread use of restroom keys. Execs were loathe to give up this perk and simply leave the door unlocked for anyone, so they simply look the other way when the homeless defecate in their plants and waste baskets. In areas where there are no public restrooms, transients are even encouraged to duck into the lobby of their buildings to defecate. Doorman Bob Denning said he didn't mind the smell and added, "I wouldn't want to bare my ass outdoors on a cold day like this. Not only that, it's worth it just to see some of the suits step in what they did to the rest of us."

When protesters started showing up outside AIG executives homes, one exec realized he could defray some of the anger by offering protesters the guest wing of their house to live in. Soon others followed suit and the practice became universal.

Likewise, exclusive athletic clubs are opening their doors to anyone who needs a shower, massage, and some time in the jacuzzi, and country clubs are allowing people living in their RVs to park on their golf courses. "We can't be elitists at a time like this, we have to be Americans first," said Hal Stark, president of Chatham Hollow Country Club. "Our members realize they used laws and infrastructure of this country to acquire their massive wealth and it is only right if they give some back in this time of need."

One question that arose surprisingly rarely was when this open door policy would end. Trip Caine of AIG was philosophical. "I don't know if it should. When I come home from the office and see Garth and Jennifer Puckett, the family staying with us, struggling to find a job or figure out how to pay for their kids to go to the doctor or send them to college, it really puts things in perspective for me. My actions have hurt real people. If they leave, I might forget that."

Wall Street's earlier effort to feed the homeless

ROOT OF RAGE: Is our democracy Wall Street's bitch?

The public anger over the bailouts and bonuses taken from bailouts and economic appointees whose loyalties clearly lie more with the corporate criminals than with us boils down to that one question: is our democracy Wall Street's bitch?

We have woken up to find that we are a lowly streetwalker with a particularly powerful and conscienceless pimp.

He demands more and more of our money, and when we tell him the little he let's us keep isn't enough to take our baby to the doctor or send our older kid to college, he says, "That aint my problem, bitch. Who told you to have kids? Besides, Daddy gotta pay off this new pimp tooth," as he shows you a diamond encrusted crown on his bicuspid. Then he beats us with his ivory pimp cane almost to death.

This shouldn't have surprised you since he has been nagging you to get your grandma to sign over her Social Security checks to him too, which you and grandma have fought off since that would leave her to die penniless in the gutter.

One day, the neighborhood cop pulls you aside. He says your pimp has gotten into some horrible gambling debts and will be killed if he can't pay them off. Your first thought is, "Good, I hope he is killed and I'll be free," but the cop says if he can't pay, the people he owes money too will kill all his girls and their children too, so you better work harder, dig up the money you've hidden from the pimp, and make your kids start walking the street too.

This is just too much to bear. You have wanted to stop walking the streets, but you didn't know how since you've worked for the same pimp your whole life as did your mother and grandmother. But this is too much. You get the other girls together, go to the police station, and tell the captain that his cop in your neighborhood is dirty and making threats on behalf of the pimp.

To your surprise and delight, he agrees, and appoints a new clean-cut cop to the beat. The first day you see him, you stop to ask him what he he is going to do about the pimp. He tells you he has given him a stern talking to and told him to cut back on gold pimp teeth, pinky rings, and velvet suits--but in the meantime, you better give him all your money or you and your children will be killed.

While you are still in shocked silence, the cop takes the roll of bills from your bra and turns to deliver it to the pimp.

You snap out of your stupor and follow him to the pimp club, where the pimp takes the money, and instead of paying someone back while cowering in fear, he laughs and buys a round of drinks for the other pimps, the new cop, and the old one.

The cop had a gun and the pimps had none. He could have arrested all the pimps or even shot them dead. He did not, which means he either works for the pimps or aspires to be one.

Up until the Bush administration, we all thought we lived in a democracy. Then when we saw our most cherished constitutional rights and democratic processes trampled all to make it easier for the rich to steal from us and other countries like Iraq, we wondered if we were losing it. Just as it we thought we were digging our way out, the rich put a gun to our head and say they want $700 billion dollars or they will destroy the world economy.

It was no surprise that the Bush administration did so.

What was surprising was that the incoming Obama administration appointed an economic team from the same criminals who extorted us and wrote the rules making it easier for them to extort, and now that they are in government again, they continue to do so.

As Eliot Spitzer pointed out, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, as well as others moving back and forth between government and Wall Street, may have collude to funnel even more money to a handful of banks and investment companies.

It is clear that the goals of Obama's economic team are to make the pimp whole and placate the streetwalkers just enough so they get back to work.

That is not enough.

Obama needs to clean the pimps out of his administration, pick a couple of the biggest ones working the streets and give them a beating they will never forget. Strip their pinky rings, take their canes, and knock out the pimp teeth. Even strip them naked of their pimp clothes. Then either throw them in jail or make them get an honest job and pay restitution to their girls (us).

Then he must kill, jail, or beat all the remaining pimps until they get out of the business.

We need a marshall like Kurt Russel in Tombstone who policed the outlaw Cowboy Gang like this:

Wyatt Earp: All right, Clanton... you called down the thunder, well now you've got it! You see that?
[pulls open his coat, revealing a badge]
Wyatt Earp: It says United States Marshal!
Ike Clanton: [terrified, pleading] Wyatt, please, I...
Wyatt Earp: [referring to Stilwell, laying dead] Take a good look at him, Ike... 'cause that's how you're gonna end up!
[shoves Ike down roughly with his boot]
Wyatt Earp: The Cowboys are finished, you understand? I see a red sash, I kill the man wearin' it!
[lets Ike up to run for his life]
Wyatt Earp: So run, you cur... RUN! Tell all the other curs the law's comin'!
[shouts]
Wyatt Earp: You tell 'em I'M coming... and hell's coming with me, you hear?...
[louder]
Wyatt Earp: Hell's coming with me!

For the Obama adminstration, this means taking down the heads of Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Chase, JPMorgan, AIG, and any other firm that is used to telling our government what to do.

They need to be frog-marched in orange jumpsuits, taken to jail, held without bail and stripped of their assets, given a trial, then serve the rest of their natural lives in prison, to be beaten and raped like anyone else.

Then he must methodically dismember their businesses into a million pieces, so they can never treat America and our democracy like their bitch again.

The longer he waits to do this, the greater the hell he will have to rain down on them, or risk being replaced by a marshal who will.

Gov't reaction to Wall Street meltdown like ''punishment'' of Prescott Bush for hiding Nazi money

If an ordinary citizen gave aid and comfort to our arch-enemy in World War II, they would have at minimum expected to spend the rest of their lives in prison or more likely, ended up like the Rosenbergs, executed for helping the Soviets.

Prescott Bush's bank was managing assets of a Nazi financier, including a steel plant that made heavy use of concentration camp labor. Far from being unaware of this, Bush mentioned it in correspondence and was concerned that his bank's ''interests be protected.'' The government found this activity troubling enough that they seized the banks assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Bush's punishment for his involvement?

You would think he would have at least ended up like John Walker Lind, stripped naked, blind-folded, and held in solitary until the trial that put him in prison for life (or shortened his life).

Instead, the whole business was hushed up and he later won a Senate seat.

It seems that something similar is going on with Wall Street today. Can anyone doubt that Wall Street's concerted effort to get themselves deregulated, their Rube Goldberg maze of shell corporations and off-shore accounts, and intentional defrauding of ordinary investors, mortgage holders, and retirees has done more damage to our economy than Tim McVeigh, Osama bin Laden, and all the other terrorists to ever blow up anything in the US combined?

And in fact, the connection to terrorism is not just by analogy, but literal. To the degree that we face a legitimate terrorist threat, it is because business interests demand to be put ahead of human rights, democracy, and even the national security of the United States.

The foremost example of this is how we treated Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev hoped to transition to a European-style social democracy, but the investor class and banks wanted a Russia that was easy to plunder of their natural resources and industry. The result was the standard of living and even life expectancy in Russia DROPPED after the fall of communism, and Putin succeeds partly because he is trying to reclaim their dignity by standing up to us. Oil companies interest in stripping Russia of their oil, gas, and pipeline income further antagonizes a Russia that we now no longer have an ideological beef with. In effect, for the sake of corporate profits, we are reigniting a Cold War with an enemy with thousands of nuclear weapons.

Worse, business is a direct cause of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administrations failure to bring a quick conclusion to the War on Terror. Those in the Islamic world do not hate us for our freedom, but because we take theirs away to ensure that our oil companies have compliant governments to deal with, from overthrowing the democratically elected secular government of Iran in the 1950s to backing the oppressive Saudi government for decades. Oddly, even though the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 found direct involvement of the Saudi government in the attacks nothing was done about it. Whether this was done because we didn't want to jeopardize business ties with Saudis or because the Saudis were doing the Bush administration a favor with the attack, neither is acceptable.

And yet, the punishment of the wealthy who endanger and loot us like this will be much like Prescott Bush's. The public will use our taxpayer dollars to clean up their mess, and they will continue to live lives of leisure and be free exercise their power as ''masters of the universe'' even though they are masters of nothing but moving our money into their pockets.

I have no problem with capitalism in theory, but in practice, we can no longer afford a financial elite that not only ignores the law, but buys our politicians and makes the indefensible legal.

Any solution to this current problem has to involve putting the fear of God or at least fear of the wrath of the American people into these spoiled sociopathic trust fund babies, the likes of which no financial elite has felt since the Russian or even French Revolution.

Anything less than that leaves America and the world at risk from more attacks by these economic terrorists who make 9/11 look like a toddler's temper tantrum.

King of Cayman Islands thanks Bush for Wall St. Bailout

The Cayman Islands formally thanked the United States for the first installment of the $350 billion Wall Street bailout.

"Just about all that money ended up in our banks, Mon," said king of the Caymen Islands and president of the Third National Bank of Post Office Box 7, Haile Ken Lay Selassie.

The Cayman Islands are notorious for their secret bank accounts used to escape individual and corporate taxes and launder drug money to make it available to banks and Wall St.

"We got about $348 billion. Hank Paulson, and the AIG and the Goldman Sachs, or whoever those guys are, they said they need the other two for shipping and handling--shipping coke and handling male prostitutes that do that nasty shit they like from their fraternity initiations. Mon, those guys are fucked up, but they make us so rich, we don't know what to do with all the money. I got a solid gold bidet to wash the shit off me ass so I don't even have to wipe myself. Even my paperboy, he drive a Rolls Royce, and our homeless can afford to hire advertising companies to beg for them."

The bailout money will be used to actually expand the land mass of the Cayman Island. "We gonna bale up that bale out money and throw it in the ocean to make the island bigger, so we put some more PO boxes on it."

The King of the Cayman Islands bears a striking resemblance to Enron CEO Ken Lay who died suddenly after being sentenced to prison for his business practices. Some suspected he faked his death and was hiding out in one of the corporate-criminal friendly states like Seychelles, Saudi Arabia, or the Cayman Islands.

"Mon, I aint no Ken Lay, I got some white in me, so maybe we are cousins or some shit like that. But I'm no way Ken Lay with a bad dreadlock wig and dyed skin."

What makes the resemblance even more odd is that the king's middle name is "Ken Lay."

He has a quick explanation for that. "Look, how am going to know when someone is talking to me when half the people in the islands is named Haile Selassie or Bob Marley something? So I put my real name in the middle so people still call me "Kenny Boy,"or the "Easy Lay," but no feds can find me with the Selassie, not that they are looking so hard with my friend the Lucky Tard as president."

As president of the Third National Bank of Post Office Box 7, the king is thought to have stewardship of 90% of the money that disappeared from the collapse of Enron, 70% of the money from the S& L crisis in the 80's, and the majority of the heroin income from Afghanistan and coca income from Columbia.

"I don't know why anyone would want to be a CEO of some fancy business in the US and have to wear a tie and all that shit," the king said. "I make a lot more money here smoking blunts in me flip flops and driving me golf cart to collect the checks from the mailboxes every day. Even club fed wouldn't have been this nice."

After Gitmo, Obama to close Club Fed prisons for Wall St. economic terrorists

Close on the heels of announcing he will close the Guantanamo Bay prison where alleged Islamic terrorist are held, Barack Obama said today he would immediately end the system of separate prisons for economic terrorists. Obama explained:

"We need to have one justice system for all Americans, even domestic terrorists who drain pension funds, break functioning businesses, destroy jobs, and corrupt our political process, all to enrich a very few."

"Instead of being sent to regular prisons with the Americans most effected by their crimes, they are sent to segregated prisons with carpet, tennis courts, pools, little threat of prison rape, and in general, little to distinguish the prison from the country clubs where they spend most of their time hatching terrorist plots to attack middle class Americans while they're playing a round of golf or sipping umbrella drinks by the pool."

"These gentlemen need a punishment that fits the magnitude of their crime."

"If a nineteen year old kid who sold a dime bag of pot has to go to the bathroom on a steel toilet with no privacy, that's where Wall Street scammers who stole hard-working Americans dreams of a safe retirement should have to go to the bathroom."

"If that nineteen year old kid is in danger of being raped by his roommate, forced to dress like Paris Hilton, and be bought and sold for cigarettes as a sex slave, that's where Wall Street terrorists belong who said they needed $700 billion of our tax dollars to keep our economy from collapsing then took the money and spent it on lavish parties, bonuses for execs and dividends. The only thing that's unfair about that is I can't imagine anyone giving up one cigarette for Henry Paulson's sorry, withered ass."

Critics of Obama's plan to put Wall Street economic terrorists in mainstream prisons argue that prison rape would not serve as a deterrent since it is very similar to the initiation ceremonies of fraternaties and secret societies the execs joined in college. An unnamed bald male escort said far from finding the experience unpleasant, many of them pay top dollar to relive it again and again.

Obama did hold out a fig leaf to Republicans and corporate-controlled Democrats:

"I have said that I wanted to reach out to my opponents, and I meant it. Many Republicans in Congress have said this proposal is too harsh, that we should have more compassion on these terrorists. They think we should just give them therapy and a hug instead and make them promise never to do it again."

"I disagree, but in the spirit of bipartisanship, I am offering an alternative to these trust fund babies gone wild who have never contributed anything to society: they can avoid prison altogether in they join the Army and serve in the infantry anywhere our troops are in combat around the world for as long as their prison sentence would have been. "

"They would not be eligible for promotion or any leadership positions since they have shown that they cannot be trusted with the safety of anyone else. Instead, they could be used to clear IED's, as decoys to draw enemy fire, and as human shields for any troops with missing or defective body armor."

"If their parents and fraternity brothers want keep them out of harm's way, they would be free to lobby for any ongoing wars to stop, but given the love these people have for money, their relatives probably prefer to cry at their funerals than lobby themselves out of war profits."

President-elect Obama went on to say that Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson would be an excellent first choice for the financier to cannon fodder program.

"He put the deal together, his firm abused it, I think it's only fair that he be the guinea pig to see how this reform works."

Obama added that he couldn't comment on whether President Bush or Vice President Cheney would be joining Paulson until after the inauguration .

How would gov't have bailed out Wall St. if they were middle class or poor?

A New York Times columnist wrote a very stupid article about how Treasury Secretary Paulson may have hurt McCain by not starting the bailouts sooner, rather than letting Lehman Brothers collapse.

It is now clear that the decision to let Lehman Brothers fail — made the weekend of Sept. 13 and 14 — provided a stunning blow to investor and consumer confidence. The economic statistics coming out now show that car sales and other retail sales, already weak, fell off a cliff. Business orders from other businesses dried up. What had been a fairly mild recession — and one that many denied was a recession at all — became a sharp one.

History does not allow do-overs, so we will never know what would have happened if Lehman had been treated as Bear Stearns was, or as the American International Group soon would be.
FULL TEXT

He seems to miss the point of why the bailout proposal justly drew the wrath of ordinary Americans on the left AND right.

Here is the response I posted on his blog:

Bailing out Lehman might have staved off the other bailouts by mere weeks or days, but it was the impression of the bailouts, not the failures, that hurt McCain.

The public perception is one of profound conservative hypocrisy and corruption. They demand unregulated capitalism and draconian cuts in the safety net for the middle class and the poor, but them trip all over themselves to bail out their wealthy friends when their scams blow up in their faces.

Think of what we do to people who need medical help without insurance or whose insurance shows them the door. They have to sell their houses, bankrupt themselves, and sometimes get divorced to qualify for help. Their lives are ruined.

By contrast, Paulson specifically demanded no strings attached, no requirements for hardship, and we have seen the results: they took our money and partied like the spoiled, useless, sociopathic frat boy human filth that they are.

If we treated them the way we do the middle class and poor who need help, they would have to drain their bank accounts of the past decades’ bonuses, sell the BMW, and three houses, and be forced to work for minimum wage until taxpayers get our bailout money back. And just for the hell of it, they would have to get random drug tests to make sure they aren't using our money for coke or crystal meth.

But of course that is based on an assumption that they are merely incompetent rather the more likely scenario that they committed intentional fraud on borrowers and the US taxpayers. In which case, they should be held in jail without bail pending their RICO trials, and wondering when it's safe to go to sleep without another inmate doing to them what they have done to America--and the world.

What did Wall St. demand from Main St. in Bankruptcy & Welfare Reform bills?

In both cases, Wall St. demanded more stringent controls on help given to the working and middle class.

They made it harder for the middle class to get relief through bankruptcy for credit card and medical debt in the bankruptcy bill.

They demanded a time limit on welfare benefits and that mothers must go to work to a certain number of hours to get their benefits even though there was no provision for childcare and the mom would usually make LESS than the cost of childcare. No matter. McDonald's and other corporations wanted more bodies and they didn't want to have to bid for them with higher wages.

Based on their own logic, there is nothing wrong with us demanding some changes in behavior in return for our financial help.

If we really wanted to follow the corporatists own logic, we would foreclose and take ownership of any financial institution we bail out.

At the very least, we should set these demands outlined by former labor secretary Robert Reich, Sen. Bernie Sanders, or columnist Robert Scheer who said we should ban foreclosures for at least a year to force banks to renegotiate with homeowners, which would keep houses from sitting empty and causing a glut on the market that drives down prices.

This is a turning point in our political history.

Either our elected officials stand by their Wall Street, country club friends, or they stand with the people they were elected to serve.

They cannot do both.