Some GOOD News for a Change: Bank of America and Two Executives Charged with Fraud before, during, and after Merrill Lynch Merger

Cuomo Takes on The Money Party 

Michael Collins on a major assault on the banksters.
Originally published Monday, 8 February 2010 in American Politics Journal

Andrew Cuomo's complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court, County of New York against the Bank of America and two former top executives has the potential to push that too big to fail entity off the edge of a very steep cliff. The charges of massive fraud are based on a compelling and exhaustive filing on February 4.

A trial will likely involve testimony by the current Bank of America CEO and President Brian Moynihan against defendants Kenneth Lewis, the bank's former CEO and board chairman, former chief financial officer (CFO) Joseph L. Price, and the bank itself. Price is currently in charge of BofA's credit card division.

The complaint charges fraud before, during and after the bank's merger with struggling brokerage firm Merrill Lynch in late 2008. The fraud cost bank shareholders and citizens billions of dollars. This is the first major case brought against our nation's largest financial institutions. These are the same financial institutions and executives that nearly destroyed the economy.

Cuomo's press release states clearly that Lewis and the bank  are examples of a much larger problem. It appears to be a leading indicator of future actions by the New York attorney general. Why else would Cuomo have generalized about institutions (plural) in his statement about this particular case?

If Cuomo succeeds in taking down one of the toughest guys on the block, he'll make a point to the rest of the crew: you're next, get ready to cooperate. Many of the key perpetrators are located in Cuomo's jurisdiction, although Bank of America (BofA) is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Clearly, there are others in line for some New York style law and order.

Cuomo is joined in this action by Niel Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP provides the billions in bailouts to bogus bankers and corporations. There's a credit line of $23.7 trillion should it be needed for even more bailouts. Ever wonder why you can't get a loan? They've taken all the money.

Charges and remedies

The bank and the two named executives are charged with failing to inform the bank's board of directors and shareholders of the major red ink on Merrill Lynch's books prior to the merger. CEO Lewis, CFO Price, and other BofA officers and professionals chose to hide $16 billion of Merrill Lynch known pre tax losses prior to board approval. That's fraud, plain and simple.  Complaint filed by New York Attorney General, Feb 4, 2009

The complaint also charges that the same parties with strong arming the federal government for $20 billion to cover Merrill's debt by threatening to back out of the merger if the money wasn't forthcoming. Then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had encouraged BofA to acquire Merrill, apparently without a rider that BofA would get billions in the process to cover their fraudulent business practices.

The lawsuit seeks two overriding remedies. The two named defendants and the entire Bank of America are enjoined from "any conduct, conspiracy, contract, or agreement, and from adopting or following any practice, plan, program, scheme, artifice or device similar to, or having a purpose and effect similar to, the conduct complained of above."

In addition, the defendants and the bank are to "disgorge all gains, pay all penalties and pay all restitution and damages caused, directly or indirectly, by the fraudulent and deceptive acts complained of herein."

These and the other remedies promise a degree of justice and, quite frankly retribution for the mess caused by the defendants.  An unnamed and unintended remedy could be serious damage to the good will value of the Bank of America.  The spectacle of a conviction of the bank and a former CEO and current division head  for fraud would have a devastating effect on public confidence.  Too big to fail may be a notion upended once and for all by a guilty verdict.

Witness Lineup: It's Bank of America versus Bank of America

Andrew Caffrey and Todd Wallach of the Boston  Globe, hinted that Bank of America president and CEO, Brian T. Moynihan will be a key witness for the prosecution. The Globe article notes that the current BofA chief, "who was involved in negotiations (for the Merrill acquisition) as the bank’s general counsel, was not charged." Later in the same article, they quote Cuomo as saying, Moynihan, "has been candid with our office with respect to the roles he played after becoming general counsel."

Put simply, Moynihan was central to the merger, knew about the fraud, participated in it, but didn't blow the whistle. All of that is established in Cuomo's complaint. He cooperated with Cuomo and wasn't indicted. His name will be at the top of the attorney general's witness list, no doubt.

As if that's not bad enough for the bank, defendant Joseph L. Price, former CFO, is currently heading up Bank of America's credit card division.

Should Moynihan testify, we'll see BofA's current CEO helping Cuomo convict his predecessor of fraud. Moynihan's testimony will also argue for a conviction of his current head of credit card operations. Since Bank of America is charged, we'll also see its current CEO plus the “Relevant Parties” described in the complaint testifying that the corporation was also guilty of fraud. Many of the 35 Relevant Parties named are current or former BofA executives or board members.

Other key witnesses may include Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Barnanke and former Treasury Secretary and TARP architect Henry Paulson, They encouraged the Bank of America - Merrill Lynch merger as part of their efforts to prevent an alleged financial meltdown at the end of the Bush administration..

Charlie Gasparino of the Daily Beast reports that the defense counsel, former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, wants the case dismissed. If not, Gasparino says that "one person close to the defense” claims that White will call Paulson and Bernanke to testify. Cuomo has the facts and obviously believes Paulson and Bernanke on the sequence of events leading to these charges. Absent a “Perry Mason” moment by the defense, their testimony holds no surprises or benefits for the defendants. Mary Jo White has little or nothing at this point other than bluster.

Justice for the people?

It's been ten years since Congress and President Clinton freed Wall Street and the major banks to open a big casino on Wall Street. That resulted in ruinous schemes like the real estate bubble. It's been five years since Alan Greenspan told citizens to get an adjustable rate mortgage, cash out the equity in their homes, and jump into the stock market. It's been over a year since Wall Street and the big banks nearly ruined the economy, cost citizens jobs, savings, retirements, and countless other hard earned gains through a variety of no-win schemes sold as solid investments.

Nothing of any importance has been done to regulate the financial industry since the bailouts. Prior to the Cuomo-Barofsky charges, there have been no major cases brought against the perpetrators of our current troubles.

Hopefully, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started what will become an era of accountability for those at the very top. This should be about more than just one case. It's an example of top down accountability.

May the bank, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Price have the speediest of trials and the absolute maximum penalties should they be found guilty.

They knew exactly what they were doing every step of the way.
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Published by APJ with permission of the author. This article may be reproduced in full or part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

Next Monday: Cuomo's Lock Down – The Case in Detail

Complaint filed by New York Attorney General, Feb 4, 2009

Rep. Kucinich Grills Ken Lewis on Fed Emails, June 11, 2009

Rep. Cummings Questions Brian Moynihan Regarding the BofA/Merrill Lynch Merger, Nov 17, 2009
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Michael Collins writes about the nexus of large corporations and money at The Money Party.

Health Care Reform DOA: Triumph of the Money Party

17 December, 2009 08:32:00 Michael Collins

There are many of us who have anywhere from serious to desperate need of health care reform. How surprised are you that the current effort is about to collapse under its own weight? There should be no surprise at all. We are going off to an undeclared war again, bankers reap profits while the real rate of unemployment is 17% at least, and there's no rush to restore the Constitutional rights stripped from us over the past years. It's The Money Party 24/7 as greedy and rapacious as they've ever been.


by Michael Collins

Dr. Howard Dean, MD, just said pull the plug on the current health care reform effort. The cure is worse than the disease, according to the good doctor.

Why the surprise?

Last week the president announced that he's sending 30,000 troops to Afghanistan without a declaration of war by Congress and without Afghanistan posing a direct threat to the United States violating both the United States Constitution and international law at the same time.

The bailed out Wall Street failures are paying back just enough of their loans to the Treasury Department to allow a new round of huge bonuses. At the same time, they continue to get tons of cash through the Federal Reserve. Pay back a few billion; get 7 trillion dollars in credit. Not a bad deal.

Congress failed to pass a bill to help with foreclosures. We're at eight million so far since 2008 with another four million predicted for 2010. The beat goes on.

The Justice Department and Congress failed to seriously investigate massive mortgage fraud from the very top on down to loan officers during the real estate bubble.

The White House and Congress forgot to include a cap on credit card rates in its credit card bill of rights. How unfortunate since the credit card companies jacked rates way up shortly after the bill passed.

The official unemployment rate of 10 percent is far below the true unemployment rate of about 17 percent or higher. Why? Because it might upset us to know that we're at Great Depression levels of unemployment.

Poverty is rising at a rapid rate with no end in sight but you'd never know it for all the attention it gets. Let the markets take care of it.

The people who made the financial mess on Wall Street are now running the U.S. Treasury. The key players, Secretary of the Treasury Geithner and insider extraordinaire Larry Summers, were appointed right after the inauguration.

The constitutional rights stolen by the previous administration are still missing in action with no real effort underway to restore them. The Patriot Act is alive and well. The feds can still tap your phone and email. They can get at any of your financial data they want and it's all done in secret. But we still haven't had a real investigation of 911.

Congress is about to consider an international treaty of copyright that will turn anyone with a public blog or web site into a cop required to enforce the new laws or face prosecution.

Throughout it all, not one member of Congress or the financial elite will miss a meal, worry about their health care, lose their house, or ever face prosecution for destroying the economy of the United States.

Their Ponzi scheme is literally too big to fail. If there were ever the least bit of concentrated scrutiny on the various wars and financial rip offs over just the past decade, it would be the end of all of them.

But The Money Party is a permanent fixture in our lives. It dominates politics, the media and the economy. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that is always accurate. Rig the game so only those with money can run for office. Hold elections with invisible ballots on electronic voting machines that nobody really understands. Allow all sorts of legal bribes for legislators. And never allow the term election fraud to be mentioned anywhere but on a few internet web sites.

Marginalize the poor, ethnic groups, immigrants, and anyone who protests the system. Kill the unions. Then intimidate those who have the courage to show up and protest with SWAT teams decked out for a serious beat down.

Take all you can from the middle class to support the big casino in banking and on Wall Street. Make husbands and wives work two jobs and be grateful for the opportunity. Provide children a lousy education that costs more every year while you talk about how much you love education.

Create false issues that pit one group against another -- race against race, class against class -- so that the great horror is never realized -- a unified public movement to demand freedom, dignity, and respect in our personal and public lives and a chance to earn a decent living in return for our hard work.

The Money Party has no ideals or goals other than to take as much as they can, at every turn, all the time and never let up.

Blame citizens for the fraud committed by the financiers.

Turn a blind eye as people lose their homes, savings, health care and jobs.

Blame humanity for pollution when it's just a few industries that create the filth that's threatening us daily.

Create side shows not worthy of a second rate carnival that you call politics and never mention that changes in administrations are really cosmetic and stylistic, not substantial. Meet the new boss, not exactly the same as the old boss, but close enough.

It's all good if you're at the top or on the take. The river keeps flowing, filthy as it is, in your direction with more and more based on the real work and the real economy of citizens who, despite all of this, strive to improve their lives and contribute to the larger good.

If things get too hot, you can just stage a big drama, get everybody upset, and make people feel grateful that they have the opportunity to be perpetual victims of the most rapacious, relentless, and callous scheme around to transfer wealth from the many to the very few.

It's only class war when we fight back and they're ready with their distracting dramas and debates on issues where the two sides are separated by just a few degrees of difference. Then demand bipartisan solutions where compromise is routinely used to break major campaign promises.

They don't care if we live or die although they do want us to be as productive as possible up to the end, as long as we don't expect to retire or enjoy the fruits of our labor.

We are nothing to them.

Michael Collins publishes Election Fraud News. His articles can also be found on Scoop Independent News, The Daily Censored  and The Smirking Chimp, among others.
This article may be reproduced in whole or in part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article. http://www.fleshandstone.net/commentary/1713.html?print

Greatest Overview of History's Greatest Heist

2009 US Economy: Largest Transfer of Wealth to Financial/Political Elite in Global History
Amped Content, Posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
By Carl Herman, Examiner

Political “leadership” of the two oligarchy parties spin their economic policy as being for the public benefit. Professional economists increasingly cast economic policy in unprecedented harsh criticism, even calling for public demonstrations against what they claim as gross violations of financial law. Let’s consider current facts of high importance:

• Transfer of somewhere over $3 trillion with a total potential of $23.7 trillion to banks and financial institutions for the socialization of their gambling losses on illegal sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps. We know the sub-prime lending was illegal because the FBI concluded 80% of all sub-prime criminal fraud originated from the lenders.

• A so-called bailout designed to give money to the banksters without accountability of where the money is going. This is according to testimony of Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor appointed to oversee the bailout for Congress, with video explanation below. The bankster-bailout was chosen rather than simply protecting depositors and reorganizing the banks under standard bankruptcy procedure. The two oligarchy political parties denied Congressional hearings for the bankster-bailout, which should have considered cost-benefit analysis for public banks rather than private banks. An important fact that would have come out of the hearings is that the total market capitalization of all the major US banks was less than $300 billion; meaning that the government could have outright bought all of them for less than a tenth of the amount given away. Think about that.

• A 2009 record payout to bank employees, including lucrative bonuses, on pace for $140 billion. Goldman Sachs, with three recent CEOs who have also been Secretary of the US Treasury, is doubling their bonuses from 2008.

• Depression-level unemployment, with the government’s “official figures” understating true unemployment by half.

• 100,000 laid-off teachers with class sizes expanding to over 40 students per class, and over a million homeless US students.

• The economic crushing of the American middle class, as explained by Elizabeth Warren in her video.

• Record high home foreclosures. An alternative policy to the bankster-bailout would have been to have the banks write-down the value of the mortgages they fraudulently wrote, and reset that lower value as the new loan amount for the homeowner. This could have been a preliminary move to creating non-profit mortgage rates for the public benefit.

• Record federal budget deficit of $1.4 trillion.

• Record federal debt of $12 trillion with annual interest payments of ~$450 billion every year. The oligarchy has no policy to ever pay the national debt, only to make the minimum interest payment. They don’t even try to defend that the national debt is in the public good and never discuss monetary reform to end the debt.

• Record total US debt from all sources of over $70 trillion.

• US military recruitment hitting targets because young Americans have no other options for work. These men and women will feed the expansion of illegal US Wars of Aggression.

Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC’s show, “Morning Meeting,” calls the economic “bailout” and subsequent policy, “the largest theft and cover-up ever,” “the worst deal since the Indians sold Manhattan,” “the ‘Masters of the Universe’ are on the take from the taxpayers,” “the biggest transfer of money in the history of the world,” and “No one, the Pharaohs, you pick ‘em, no one even comes close to how much the banks and politicians have stolen from us.” His video is also below.

Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University simply writes, “The rich have stolen the economy.”

If it’s any comfort, remember that America was born from recognition that our government was playing us, exploiting our labor for their financial gain and not for the public good. Remember that our government labeled Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, and all the Founding Fathers as “traitors” when they didn’t blindly and stupidly believe the empty spin that the government was acting in the public good. They also predicted that future generations would have to fight to retain the liberty they wrested from lying political whores who murdered the public good in exchange for personal wealth, fame and power.

If you ever wondered how educated Germans could ever believe Nazi propaganda, all you have to do is look around the US today.

The good news is that the structural economic change for the public good is simple. Monetary reform ends the banks from creating money, shifts this power to the Treasury for the direct payment of public goods and services and minimizing the peoples’ cost of credit (think 1% interest-rate mortgages). Real regulation will end casino capitalism with exotic derivatives betting on future economic outcomes that produce no public benefit in the gambling. Taking money out of elections and politics will limit political corruption. Breaking up the five corporations that currently serve as the propaganda arm of the oligarchy will help; the so-called mainstream media, or sheepstream media corpse as I like to call it.

To get from here to the good news is a formidable task. I suggest a Truth and Reconciliation process to exchange our getting the complete truth and ending all criminal and damaging political and economic acts for the perpetrators’ cooperation and return of public assets. I’d even allow them a stipend to facilitate their surrender of our government and economy; what the oligarchy presently consider their own twisted private playground.

The two interviews are necessary education for the public to see the economy for what it is. They are 6-minutes and 7-minutes.

As always, please share this article with all who say they want economic competence and want to be responsible citizens. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe by clicking under the article title. Please feel free to peruse my archive of work here.

GRAND THEFT -- NATIONAL ECONOMY

There was a warning long before this mega-crime was committed, but it was ignored.
FRONTLINE gives you the little known history.

Professor Chossudovsky tells you how the scam works.

From here on, no more "socialist" government taking our hard-earned tax money to aid the poor. No! The new privatized U.S.A. will socialize the gambling losses of the big banks, taking money from the poor -- soon to include the former middle class -- to "aid" the super rich.

DemocracyNow!: As Foreclosures Hit All-Time High, Wall Street on Pace to Hand Out Record $140B in Employee Bonuses

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent. We speak to former bank regulator William Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

Post Script: Foreclosures: 'Worst three months of all time.'

The Real Price of Goldman’s Giganto-Profits

Bloggers Note: The figure above is taken from the article below by Matt Taibbi, which tells of the many, many other ways Goldman has been picking taxpayer pockets than by merely raking in profits from stock-market manipulation. For a refresher on the meaning of “Value at Risk” or "VaR" plotted in this figure, check out an earlier blog of mine. But be sure not to miss the full article by Matt Taibbi, only the first three paragraphs of which I reproduce below.

July 16, 2009

by Matt Taibbi

So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, what’s wrong with the company so far earmarking $11.4 billion in compensation for its employees? What’s wrong is that this is not free-market earnings but an almost pure state subsidy.

Last year, when Hank Paulson told us all that the planet would explode if we didn’t fork over a gazillion dollars to Wall Street immediately, the entire rationale not only for TARP but for the whole galaxy of lesser-known state crutches and safety nets quietly ushered in later on was that Wall Street, once rescued, would pump money back into the economy, create jobs, and initiate a widespread recovery. This, we were told, was the reason we needed to pilfer massive amounts of middle-class tax revenue and hand it over to the same guys who had just blown up the financial world. We’d save their asses, they’d save ours. That was the deal.

It turned out not to happen that way. We constructed this massive bailout infrastructure, and instead of pumping that free money back into the economy, the banks instead simply hoarded it and ate it on the spot, converting it into bonuses. So what does this Goldman profit number mean? This is the final evidence that the bailouts were a political decision to use the power of the state to redirect society’s resources upward, on a grand scale. It was a selective rescue of a small group of chortling jerks who must be laughing all the way to the Hamptons every weekend about how they fleeced all of us at the very moment the game should have been up for all of them.

...find rest of article here

Taxpayers, Grab Your Pitchforks and Stand with Dean Baker!

A Trillion Dollars for the Banks: How About a Second Opinion?

Monday 06 April 2009

by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants to have the government lend up to a trillion dollars to hedge funds, private equity, funds and the banks themselves to clear their books of toxic assets. The plan implies a substantial subsidy to the banks. It is likely to result in the disposal of these assets at far above market value, with the government picking up the losses.

As much as we all want to help out the Wall Street bankers in their hour of need, taxpayers may reasonably ask whether this is the best use of our money. After all, the $1 trillion that is being set aside for this latest TARP variation is equal to 300 million SCHIP kid years. Congress has had heated debates over sums that were a small fraction of this size. To give another useful measuring stick, the Geithner plan could fund 1 million of the Woodstock museums that were the main prop of Senator McCain's presidential campaign.

The core problem is that many of our big banks are bankrupt. If they had to acknowledge the losses that they have incurred on their housing related loans (and increasing their loans in commercial real estate) Citigroup, Bank of America, and many other large banks would be insolvent. Thus far, they have avoided reality by keeping these loans on their books at inflated prices.

The Geithner plan is an effort to rescue the banks by using government funding to prop up the price of these bad loans to levels that will allow the banks to stay solvent. It is not clear that the plan is big enough to accomplish this goal, but that is the basic intention. If it doesn't work, then presumably Geithner will come out with another TARP permutation that involves giving the banks even more money.

There is an alternative. Rather than using government money to keep them alive, we could force the banks to go through a type of managed bankruptcy process like the one that is currently being proposed for General Motors and Chrysler.

Geithner has supposedly ruled out the bankruptcy option because when he, along with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, tried letting Lehman Brothers go under last fall, it didn't turn out very well. Of course, it is not necessary to go the route of an uncontrolled bankruptcy that Geithner and Co. pursued with Lehman.

The government could set up an arranged bankruptcy under which creditors have accepted conditions in advance. While this may not be easy to negotiate, the government does have enormous bargaining power in pursuing such a deal. The creditors (other than insured deposits, which will be paid in full) of these banks may end up with nothing if the government just let the banks sink.

The prospect of even an arranged bankruptcy of a major bank will undoubtedly shake up markets, but many safeguards have been put in place since the Lehman collapse. If the stock market goes down for a few weeks or months, who cares? Running the economy to serve the stock market is a sure recipe for disaster; if President Obama fixes the economy, the stock market will do just fine in the long run.

Anyhow, the Geithner crew insists that there are no alternatives to his plan; we have to just keep giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks. Perhaps Geithner is right. But before we throw such huge sums away, further enriching the bankers who wrecked the economy, maybe we should get a second opinion.

Suppose that Congress appropriated a modest chunk of money to have independent economists put together teams to construct alternative plans. Why not give M.I.T. professor Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, $5 million to hire a crew to outline his preferred path? Congress could give Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner and one-time chief economist to President Clinton, who is also a harsh critic of the Geithner plan, a similar sum to put together his own team.

These economists could develop their best plans and put them out for public consumption. Geithner's crew can then tell us why their plans are unworkable and we must instead hand over the money to banks.

Given how much money Geithner wants to spend - putting it in the hands of the folks that brought on this economic crisis - it would seem appropriate to first examine all the alternatives. After all, we could find out what our options are in this case for the price of just a few A.I.G. executive bonuses. That has to be a good deal in anyone's book.

Dean Baker is the Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. CEPR's Jobs Byte is published each month upon release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment report.

The Free Market, Financial Style

Weekend Edition
March 27-29, 2009

How the Scam Works

By MICHAEL HUDSON

Newspaper reports seem surprised at how high banks are bidding for the junk mortgages that Treasury Secretary Geithner is now bidding for, having mobilized the FDIC and Fed to transfer yet more public funds to the banks. Bank stocks are soaring – thereby bidding up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as if the “financial industry” really were part of the industrial economy.

Why are the very worst offenders – Bank of America (now owner of the Countrywide crooks) and Citibank the largest buyers? As the worst abusers and packagers of CDOs, shouldn’t they be in the best position to see how worthless their junk mortgages are?

That turns out to be the key! Obviously, the government has failed to protect itself – deliberately, intentionally failed to do so – in order to let the banks pull off the following scam.

Suppose a bank is sitting on a $10 million package of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that was put together by, say, Countrywide out of junk mortgages. Given the high proportion of fraud (and a recent Fitch study found that every package it examined was rife with financial fraud), this package may be worth at most only $2 million as defaults loom on Alt-A “liars’ loan” mortgages and subprime mortgages where the mortgage brokers also have lied in filling out the forms for hapless borrowers or witting operators taking out mortgages at far more than properties were worth and pocketing the excess.

The bank now offers $3 million to buy back this mortgage. What the hell, the more they bid, the more they get from the government. So why not bid $5 million. (In practice, friendly banks may bid for each other’s junk CDOs.) The government – that is, the hapless FDIC – puts up 85 per cent of $5 million to buy this – namely, $4,250,000. The bank only needs to put up 15 per cent – namely, $750,000.

Here’s the rip-off as I see it. For an outlay of $750,000, the bank rids its books of a mortgage worth $2 million, for which it receives $4,250,000. It gets twice as much as the junk is worth.

The more the banks holding junk mortgages pay for this toxic waste, the more the government will pay as part of its 85 per cent. So the strategy is to overpay, overpay, and overpay. Paying 15 per cent is a small price to pay for getting the government to put in 85 per cent to take the most toxic waste off your books.

The free market at work, financial style.

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached at mh@michael-hudson.com

TAXPAYERS ARISE! The True Meaning of Cramer-v.-Stewart Debate

Every U.S. taxpayer should watch this edition of The Daily Show: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Keep you ear open to how many times either Jon Stewart or Jim Cramer mentions the fact that banks have been using "35-to-one leverage" in their derivatives trading. What exactly does this mean? Well, it means that they were betting 35 times their net worth that the markets would go up, up, up ...forever.

And when they finally found out that it was all just a bubble, which would not continue inflating forever (surprise!), they suddenly found themselves up to their keisters in debt for 35 times their net worths!!!

What to do???

Oh, no problema. The government, acting as agent for the taxpayer, would commit the taxpayers to pay their debt! Swee...eet for most of the billionaire bankers (though too bad about the few like Madoff, whose guilt was much easier to expose)! Too bad too for the taxpayers that they elected a government that was immediately willing to lay this mountainous debt on their innocent backs...

...or did they really elect their government? Jon Stewart now needs to invite on to The Daily Show representatives of the national TV news community that failed to report a single word of the abounding evidence of the election theft that has been going on for the past decade...

If anyone has the slightest doubt that some of our “elected” representatives and officials are covering up the election fraud committed on their behalves, watch Tucson local TV newscaster Bud Foster interviewing attorney Bill Risner regarding evidence of election theft in Pima County, AZ. (It comes out in this interview that LOCAL Democrats -- AND REPUBLICANS! -- are now united in their desire to expose this fraud ...while AZ Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, has repeatedly frustrated Risner's lawsuits for access to public records that would finally reveal the truth!)