Counter Economics

There is one Congressman on the Financial Services Committee who has actually stood up to concentrated financial power, Alan Grayson.

Who is Alan Grayson?

Alan Grayson is a new Congressman who is a former practicing attorney who has clerked for the Supreme Court in his younger days. He sits on the Financial Service Committee. What is interesting is he is one of the few Congressmen asking these types of questions. Furthermore, it should be noticed that in several of these videos there is no one else sitting on the committee side. The question would be why on such important questions no one else except Barney Frank (who is the chair, and is obligated to be there) is interested in participating in these meetings. There are over 70 Congressmen who sit on this committee, yet almost no one participates when Grayson is asking questions. Our interpretation is that is that this is a sign of respect to the banking industry. That is if the committee members know what is “best for them” they will not even be associated with these questions. Grayson is one of the few (only) Congressmen who is standing up for the people that voted for him.

How is the Bailout Being Managed

A good portion of the population thinks that the bailout was necessary (without observing the deep fraud and corruption that caused the bailout), however just these videos demonstrate that the bailout is being and has been executed with extreme opacity which is covering up fraud on a huge scale. Grayson, as well as the entire Financial Services Committee (most of who are not there) is clearly being lied to or the interviewees are clearly attempting to dodge the question. Here is a listing of the Congressmen on this committee. It might help if they were asked why they have not interest in getting to the bottom of this corrupt bailout. http://financialservices.house.gov/who.html

Simply Illegal

As we have been saying for for some time, so much of what went on before and after the financial crisis is simply illegal. Unless the people responsible are punished, we will accelerate towards a system where justice is entirely based upon wealth. The first person to begin prosecuting is Henry Paulson, who violated the restrictions of his powers as head of the Treasury and conspired to show preferential treatment to his old firm (Goldman Sacks) in a way that broke the law.

http://counterecon.com/2009/01/14/reverse-the-bailout-arrest-and-prosecute-henry-paulson/

References An excerpt from an interview in Salon.

GG: The argument that he made–he did give you a reason why he felt as though you shouldn’t get that information, or at least why it ought not be publicly disclosed–was that if these institutions know that their receipt of these funds will be made public, that they will refuse to participate in the bailout program, that they won’t take the money. Do you find that to be persuasive, and why do you or don’t you?

AG: I don’t. And I don’t find it too persuasive for a couple of different reasons. The first reason is that by law the Federal Reserve is the lender of last resort. So the people who borrowed this $1.2 trillion from the Federal Reserve literally have nowhere else to go. That’s the principle, the underlying principle that governs the Federal Reserve’s operation. It’s why we have the Federal Reserve. We have a Federal Reserve to serve as the lender of last resort. So they would take the money because they’d literally have no choice.

The second reason is that the whole reason why we have securities law in the first place, why we have a Securities Exchange Act, is to allow investors to make informed decisions. So if in fact it’s true that Citicorp took $50 billion from the Federal Reserve, certainly the people who are investing in Citicorp need to know that. Frankly all the rest of us do, too.

If these institutions are going to fail at some point in the future, then people need to be able to protect themselves against that. It doesn’t seem to me to be a good idea in general to try to deliberately keep people in the dark, under the assumption that if they knew the truth; they might actually act on it.

Think that through a little bit. What he’s saying is, we wouldn’t want people to know that $50 billion went to institution X, because if they knew–well, what? What would they do? The fact is the matter is that they would understand the truth of the matter, which is that institution X is pretty shaky, and maybe institution X doesn’t deserve their money. So, what we have is the collaboration between the Federal Reserve and failing institutions to keep the public in the dark.

AG: No, I think if you look at this particular situation, the Federal Reserve is assuming that it has certain authorities in a very aggressive way, based upon laws that were written under entirely different circumstances 70 years ago. You know, if somebody said 70 years ago to Mr. Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve would like to issue $1.2 trillion to favored institutions, he would have said, what are you talking about; there isn’t $1.2 trillion in the entire world. And now they’re taking that as some sort of license, 70 years later, to do what they want to do, and keep it secret.

It’s utterly senseless. Not only does it completely mock the idea of checks and balances in government, and mock the idea of democracy, but it opens us up to a tremendous possibility of corruption.

Let’s suppose for the sake of the argument, that Mr. Bernanke decides to give a billion dollars to a fledging institution called the Dick Cheney Savings and Loan, and its only asset was a numbered Swiss bank account. How would we know? How would we know that that happened? The answer is, if you take the Federal Reserve’s view of things, we wouldn’t. And that’s disastrous.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/01/26/grayson/index1.html

This is an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia.

In early 2009, Grayson responded to controversial comments by talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh, in which Limbaugh stated that he wanted President Barack Obama “to fail”, by saying, “Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we’d all need pain killers.”[10] On March 3 of that year, satirizing incidents in which prominent Republican officials (including Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele) were forced to apologize to Limbaugh for criticizing him, Grayson released a second statement, in which he said, “I’m sorry Limbaugh called for harsh sentences for drug addicts while he was a drug addict. I’m also sorry that he’s bent on seeing America fail. And I’m sorry that Limbaugh is one sorry excuse for a human being.”[11][12] Grayson Suing Corrupt Defense Contractors

“Mr. Grayson has filed dozens of lawsuits against Iraq contractors on behalf of corporate whistle-blowers. He won a huge victory last month [March 2006] when a federal jury in Virginia ordered a security firm called Custer Battles LLC to return $10 million in ill-gotten funds to the government. The ruling marked the first time an American firm was held responsible for financial improprieties in Iraq.”[10]

In the words of Senator Dorgan, there is an “orgy of greed” in Iraq. Vice President Cheney’s old firm Halliburton gets billions of dollars in no-bid contracts. War profiteers run wild, stealing millions from both US taxpayers and the Iraqi people. Corrupt corporations plunder Iraqi reconstruction funds, sabotaging the war effort. And the Bush Administration does nothing to stop it.

Everyone is concerned about the War in Iraq. Alan Grayson has done something about it.

Alan has taken on the biggest corrupt defense contractors, and won. His work on behalf of taxpayers has been recognized and applauded not only in the Wall Street Journal, but in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, 60 Minutes, the BBC, and newspapers and magazines in dozens of countries around the world.

“Mr. Grayson has filed dozens of lawsuits against Iraq contractors on behalf of corporate whistle-blowers. He won a huge victory last month [March 2006] when a federal jury in Virginia ordered a security firm called Custer Battles LLC to return $10 million in ill-gotten funds to the government. The ruling marked the first time an American firm was held responsible for financial improprieties in Iraq.”[10]

In the words of Senator Dorgan, there is an “orgy of greed” in Iraq. Vice President Cheney’s old firm Halliburton gets billions of dollars in no-bid contracts. War profiteers run wild, stealing millions from both US taxpayers and the Iraqi people. Corrupt corporations plunder Iraqi reconstruction funds, sabotaging the war effort. And the Bush Administration does nothing to stop it.

Everyone is concerned about the War in Iraq. Alan Grayson has done something about it.

Alan has taken on the biggest corrupt defense contractors, and won. His work on behalf of taxpayers has been recognized and applauded not only in the Wall Street Journal, but in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, 60 Minutes, the BBC, and newspapers and magazines in dozens of countries around the world. – Wikipedia