Thursday, March 26, 2009

Shedding light on how The Political Class is winning with the bailouts

With court-enforced Freedom of Information requests hitting the desks of Bernanke and Geithner, some light is finally being shed on the bailouts they continue to champion. Bloomberg's Mark Pittman and Christine Harper had this piece offering a few details on the AIG bailout and TARP funds delivered to The Political Class. And here's an abbreviated chart of the biggest winners of Big Government's latest assault on the working class:And here's another Bloomberg piece (by Hugh Son) explaining the tripartisan use of AIG and TARP as front men for the Goldman Sachs bailout. "Tripartisan" refers to Paulson (R-Goldman), Rubin (D-Goldman) and Geithner (Chief of Staff - Goldman). Deep in the article is an interesting comment:

Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, 83, AIG’s former chief executive officer, said at a Hong Kong luncheon that bankruptcy would have produced better results because the contracts could be redone.

“The counterparties all become general creditors, and they get in line with everybody else,” Greenberg said, adding it’s “puzzling” the government didn’t try to get new contracts. “You renegotiate things all the time. In fact, if you had declared Chapter 11, I guarantee you that the judge in bankruptcy would be renegotiating terms on almost everything.”

Don't get me wrong. The unending bailouts were not strictly for Goldman Sachs. Rather, they were intended to benefit all members of The Political Class.

I think it's also worth noting that our senior Senator, Chris Dodd, is the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. And if I understand Senate rules correctly, he could very easily subpoena all the information but he does not use his power of subpoena.

Why?

Tim White

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