James Pence Videos
Last night I dreamed I was in the middle of the ocean, treading water and fighting for my life. I can't remember the part of the dream that put me in the ocean, but I do remember the part when a luxury yacht pulled up beside me and a well dressed man leaned over the shiny brass yacht railing asked me if I could give him some money and I said. "Money, are you kidding me?" "I'm drowning here!" The man turned and walked back inside the yacht and I watched as the yacht sped out of sight. I sunk beneath the water and woke up shaking in a cold sweat.
OK, it was just a dream and I'm not a dream interpreter, but that dream was a revelation for me and now I see clearly what that yacht represented. It represented Wall Street and the extent of their greed and I also understand why Paul Krugman had this to say about latest U.S. Treasury bailout program "In fact it fills me with a sense of despair."
Nobel laureate Krugman slams Geithner bailout plan.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman said in remarks published on Monday that the latest U.S. Treasury bailout program is nearly certain to fail, triggering a sense of personal despair.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday unveiled a plan aimed at persuading private investors to help rid banks up to $1 trillion in toxic assets that that are seen as a roadblock to economic recovery.
"This is more than disappointing," Krugman wrote in The New York Times. ""In fact it fills me with a sense of despair."
"The Geithner scheme would offer a one-way bet: if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt," the Princeton University economist said, citing weekend reports outlining the plan.
"This isn't really about letting markets work. It's just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets," he added.
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Then when I see how much money, $5.1 billion over the last decade, the financial sector has invested in the politicians, I really understand why I feel like I'm drowning.
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Policy in Washington.
Common Dreams
by Robert Weissman
Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown.
Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps.
But it couldn't have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade.
The money flows are laid out in gruesome detail in "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," a report that my colleague Jim Donahue and I wrote, along with a team of contributors from the Consumer Education Foundation and my organization, Essential Information. The report is available at: www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm.
The entire financial sector (finance, insurance, real estate) drowned political candidates in campaign contributions, spending more than $1.7 billion in federal elections from 1998-2008. Primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade, about 55 percent went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector's 2008 election cycle contributions.
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My question for Barack Obama is this: Mr. President, with all due respect sir, we're drowning out here. Why are you leaving us to drown and putting the Wall Street Free Market Flea Market thugs in lifeboats?
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