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Expose the Crooks. Take This Viral!
(cmaukonen's Blog has a partial transcript and remarks)
This interview from the 4/3/09 Bill Moyers Journal is a must watch, and must share with others. William Black was the litigation director for the Savings & Loan scandal. He wrote the 2005 book "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry." In this interview he discusses the intentional creation and continued coverup of the current financial meltdown. View the video in the extended entry.
You may watch the full video (with transcript) at Bill Moyers Journal: CSI Bailout with William Black.
They cannot continue the crime if we all know and yell!
Research copy (u: wolf p:wolf)
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THis comes on again tomorrow, I think. I saw it the first time, or listened to it while I blogged.
Good post.
April 5, 2009 1:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've watched it 4 times. There is so much in that interview.
Galbraith and Black wrote recommendations in the Nation Bailout Plan: Trust But Verify in September 2008. As far as I can tell, neither Paulsen OR Geithner even looked at it.
April 5, 2009 1:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm following along here, Rowan. Thanks. :)
April 5, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks TheraP. I hope folks spread the word to get folks to watch this interview.
April 5, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I echo TheraP's thanks Rowan!
I've heard Black on the radio. He's a dangerous man. If too many people are exposed to his quite simple and clear description of what went on, the big boys at the top who made trillions off the fraudulent schemes might actually have to face the music for their crimes.
Unless the Obama administration quickly changes it's tune from trying to "restore" the criminals to their previous respectiable stature and instead turns the DOJ loose on these silk stocking criminals, it too will be complicit in the entire fraudulent scheme. It seems all of the crooks here have the same excuse which is that everyone was doing it. Not good enough. People should note that Black calls Bernie Madoff a piker in this whole affair and I do not find that hard to believe at all.
It's simply an outrage that there is no major criminal investigation going on. If Black is to be believed (and I think he is) there should be thousands upon thousands of these people headed to jail and they should also be losing all their ill-gotten wealth. Why this is not going on is inexcusable.
Is it any wonder the Europeans are demanding regulation on the part of American authorities instead of focusing on spending more? Our financiers robbed them blind just like they did their own countrymen and women! Off with their heads I say.
April 5, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yez!
April 5, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Off with their heads, oleeb? I am not saying that isn't a reasonable and justifiable option but I am for taking all their money and making them work at a Wal-Mart cleaning the toilets for the rest of their lives.
April 5, 2009 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like that solution. And in the stocks on days off! With video we can watch over the internet! :)
April 5, 2009 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like the stocks idea too Thera!!!
But after all these years of being unproductive in their jobs I would like to see them do something of benefit to society. Serving meals in homeless shelters maybe. Volunteering to work at Red Cross blood drives. Picking up trash along highways as part of beautification work. All of these are worthwhile endeavors, which of course they'd loathe to do, but at least they'd be doing something productive for once in their lives.
April 5, 2009 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dishonesty was present from the very start. Professional lenders made loans to people who they knew would never be able to repay. They sold the loans before the ink was dry so they could get their money and let the investor take the loss.
We need to refuse to accept the argument that they did nothing illegal. They did and I am gald to see Mr. Black calling it what it is, fraud, from Day 1. It scares the Reich to have this sort of proposition because if this is proved to be criminal, then a lot of what they are doing could be illegal as well. The mere fact they are aware this is true suggests that they knew it was wrong as they did it. This is no innocent error. These original lenders are not innocent.
The REAL irony here is that Washington Mutual was one of the first casualties. When we got our loan from them, they declared that they could sell our loan, but that they had not sold any of their loans in something like 15 years or more. This suggests that while they gave fair loans, the loans they bought were tainted enough to bring them down ... or not ... someone should really dig into this who knows forensic accounting, because the way I see it, WaMu's fall was Chase Manhattan's gain. There are now fewer players dissolving a diverse environment into a few mongo-corporations creating something akin to a New World Order.
April 5, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Got pichfork?
(I do)
April 5, 2009 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed. We have taken institutions "too big to fail" and made them even bigger. INSANE. This is why I have said umpteen times that if we are going to be throwing this kind of money at "banks" we should be throwing it at community-based banks. Renegotiate the loans there as well. Strengthen them- not ace them out of existence by taking our money and giving it to the crooks.
April 5, 2009 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love the very last thing Black says with a knowing and very cutting smile to Moyers:
"And by the way, the folks who are the better regulators,they pay their taxes, so you can get em through the vetting process a lot quicker."
April 5, 2009 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gosh, Rowan, doesn't this all validate those blogs I'm writing? No wonder they are attracting so much denigration!
I have passed this along via email. This is simply a travesty! Very upsetting - to say the least.
Ugh!!!!
(outrage fatigue....)
April 5, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome to hegemonic capitalism. Something I've been yelling about for over a decade. Black doesn't address the global nature of what has gone on. He doesn't address "legal" practices by every major corporation that deposit all earnings off shore and then only bring back to the states what they need to operate.
This is big, but it exactly what numerous people have been trying to get folks to wake up to.
Two things outrage me (well major things anyway)about the "economic" situation. One, that people seem to refuse to believe that it is unfettered capitalism that ultimately leads to these types of scenarios. CAPITALISM GOOD!!!!! In fact, we have merged the concepts of capitalism and democracy.
Second, that even those politicians who are frequently seen a "good" ones - like Obama, Franks, etc - are willing to continue promote the same BS mantra. They don't want to challenge the economic elite - and neither do most progressives.
April 5, 2009 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
In today's mistitled "Economic View" Tyler Cowen argues that the financial system can be better watched by creditors (those with skin in the game) than by regulators.
But because he can't abide seeing creditors take a haircut (some might become insolvent), he's decided that rather than penalize creditors, the way to go is to penalize the compensation of creditors' agents (hedge fund managers, for example) when their investment selections go south.
Is this a shell game in which one more oh-so-serious Washingtonian elitist ("The populist riffraff are at the gates") attempts to take our eye off the pea in order to save the banks' unsecured creditors? Or does his suggestion have merit?
April 5, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know the answer to your question, Ellen. But shell game it is for sure! Of that I have no doubt. The problem, to me, is that we have so many layers of wrongdoing and cover-up, who can tell what they're doing (or who's doing it) while the shells are moving?
April 5, 2009 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
ellen, ellen, if you want to be taken seriously, there are things you just DON'T MENTION!
April 5, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is Basil wearing a plaster and what is Sybil doing in hospital?
April 6, 2009 4:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Never mind about Sybil. I checked imdb -- ingrown toenail.
But that still leaves Basil's pate to explain.
April 6, 2009 4:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Manuel knocked Basil on the head with a frying pan in order to stop him from forcing him back into the burning kitchen where M had started a fire because B had started a fire-drill because S had asked him to do one. Geez, I thought economists knew this stuff...
April 6, 2009 6:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would argue this is a shell game. What they are arguing is that the markets will work better if they are self regulating. That is exactly the policy that was pursued and it is the path Greenspan urged. It is also the path that he has now come to believe is fundamentally flawed.
April 5, 2009 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink