Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, April 24, 2010

The Vampire Squid Made Money Shorting the Housing Bubble, Which They Had a Major Part in Inflating... What a Shock.

Yeah, like this is any real surprise to anybody anymore. Not only did Goldman Sachs make a boatload of cash on both sides of the housing bubble, they also lied about the fact that they made money when the housing markets collapsed.
In late 2007 as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded e-mail messages saying that they were making “some serious money” betting against the housing markets.

The e-mails, released Saturday morning by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear to contradict previous statements by Goldman that left the impression that the firm lost money on mortgage-related investments.

In the e-mails, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the bank’s chief executive, acknowledged in November of 2007 that the firm had lost money initially. But it later recovered by making negative bets, known as short positions, enabling it to profit as housing prices plummeted. “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” he wrote. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”

In another message, dated July 25, 2007, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, reacted to figures that said the company had made a $51 million profit from bets that the value of mortgage -related securities would drop. “Tells you what might be happening to people who don’t have the big short,” he wrote in an email to Gary D. Cohn, now Goldman’s president.
Goldman Sachs created a risky set of mortgaged-based securities. They then got Moody's to give those garbage securities a triple-A rating, sold them to other investors, and then shorted their own products.

But do you see the Teabaggers out calling for the heads of the banksters? Do you see the Teabaggers demanding that the Wall Street goons who knowingly created those CDOs and then sold them off pay the price for their misdeeds?

No, you don't.

Did you see the Teabaggers out in the streets while the Bush Administration was trampling all over the Bill of Rights?

No, you didn't.

Did you see the Teabaggers protesting when Bush pushed through tax cuts which were designed to take the Federal yearly budget from running surpluses to running deficits?

No, you sure didn't.

Did you see the Teabaggers screaming about the deficit when the Bush Administration put the entire cost of two wars on the national credit card, or when they rammed through an expansion of Medicare without providing a penny of additional revenue to pay for it?

No, they were as quiet as a pack of sleeping church mice.

The Teabaggers are only concerned about two things: They hate the idea of making health care universal and they hate the idea that a Democrat, let alone one who is not a white man, is sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office.

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