This is a few days old but I’m just catching up on news after PorcFest and this goes well with “Fed engaged in “cover-up” of BofA-Merrill deal-lawmaker.”
About John Thain though… I agree with Lew Rockwell. What about Obama?
Ex-Merrill Lynch CEO Thain is being villified for spending $1.2 million to redo his office, including $1,400 on a wastebasket, as the company was losing money. It was wrong, and he paid the price. But Obama is redecorating the White House, and buying a new “Air Force 1″ for himself, the most expensive airplane in the world, as the government loses trillions. How much stolen money does it take to keep the president and his court in imperial style? Is any of this appropriate in a depression? How much are the wastebaskets in his palace? Such questions are never asked.
I’d pay to get all those people on the same show again for even 5 minutes.
The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States trooped into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department at 3 p.m. Monday. To their astonishment, they were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left.
The chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, was receptive, saying he thought the deal looked pretty good once he ran the numbers through his head. The chairman of Wells Fargo, Richard Kovacevich, protested strongly that, unlike his New York rivals, his bank was not in trouble because of investments in exotic mortgages, and did not need a bailout, according to people briefed on the meeting.
But by 6:30, all nine chief executives had signed — setting in motion the largest government intervention in the American banking system since the Depression and retreating from the rescue plan Paulson had fought so hard to get through Congress only two weeks earlier.
Sounds a lot like what Herbert Hoover did at the beginning of the Great Depression. We all know, or should after reading the above link, how well that went.
Reid may not know what to do… but Paul does. Too bad no one listens.
Thinking Liberty
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