Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal

by Matt Taibbi / Rolling Stone

A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.


This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline. 

This deal will also submarine efforts by both defrauded investors in MBS and unfairly foreclosed-upon homeowners and borrowers to obtain any kind of relief in the civil court system. The AGs initially talked about $20 billion as a settlement number, money that would “toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners,” as Gretchen Morgenson reported the other day.

The banks, however, apparently “balked” at paying that sum, and no doubt it will end up being a lesser amount when the deal is finally done.

To give you an indication of how absurdly small a number even $20 billion is relative to the sums of money the banks made unloading worthless crap subprime assets on foreigners, pension funds and other unsuspecting suckers around the world, consider this: in 2008 alone, the state pension fund of Florida, all by itself, lost more than three times that amount ($62 billion) thanks in significant part to investments in these deadly MBS. 

So this deal being cooked up is the ultimate Papal indulgence. By the time that $20 billion (if it even ends up being that high) gets divvied up between all the major players, the broadest and most destructive fraud scheme in American history, one that makes the S&L crisis look like a cheap liquor store holdup, will be safely reduced to a single painful but eminently survivable one-time line item for all the major perpetrators.

But Schneiderman, who earlier this year launched an investigation into the securitization practices of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and other companies, is screwing up this whole arrangement. Until he lies down, the banks don’t have a deal. They need the certainty of having all 50 states and the federal government on board, or else it’s not worth paying anybody off. To quote the immortal Tony Montana, “How do I know you’re the last cop I’m gonna have to grease?” They need all the dirty cops on board, or else the whole enterprise is FUBAR. 

In addition to the global settlement, Schneiderman is also blocking an individual $8.5 billion settlement for Countrywide investors. He has sued to stop that deal, claiming it could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses.”

If Schneiderman thinks $8.5 billion is an insufficient, fractional payoff just for defrauded Countrywide investors, then you can imagine how bad a $20 billion settlement for the entire industry would be for the victims.

In that particular Countrywide settlement deal, it looks like Bank of New York Mellon, the New York Fed, Pimco and other players negotiated on behalf of defrauded investors. They told the Times they were happy with the deal, but investors outside the talks told Gretchen they weren’t happy with the settlement. 

Schneiderman apparently listened to those voices instead of the Mellon-Fed-BofA crowd, which infuriated the insiders who struck the actual deal. In a remarkable quote given to the Times, Kathryn Wylde, the Fed board member who ostensibly represents the public, said the following about Schneiderman:

It is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.

This, again, is coming not from a Bank of America attorney, but from the person on the Fed board who is supposedly representing the public!

This quote leads one to wonder just what Wylde would consider “indefensible,” given that stealing is pretty much the worst thing that a bank can do — and these banks just finished the longest and most orgiastic campaign of stealing in the history of money. Is Wylde waiting for Goldman and Citi to blow up a skyscraper? Dump dioxin into an orphanage? It’s really an incredible quote.

The banks are going to claim that all they’re guilty of is bad paperwork. But while the banks are indeed being investigated for "paperwork" offenses like mass tax evasion (by failing to pay fees associated with mortgage registrations and deed transfers) and mass perjury (a la the “robo-signing” practices), their real crime, the one Schneiderman is interested in, is even more serious.

The issue goes beyond fraudulent paperwork to an intentional, far-reaching theft scheme designed to take junk subprime loans and disguise them as AAA-rated investments. The banks lent money to corrupt companies like Countrywide, who made masses of bad loans and immediately sold them back to the banks.

The banks in turn hid the crappiness of these loans via certain poorly-understood nuances in the securitization process – this is almost certainly where Scheniderman’s investigators are doing their digging – before hawking the resultant securities as AAA-rated gold to fools in places like the Florida state pension fund.

They did this for years, systematically, working hand in hand in a wink-nudge arrangement with clearly criminal enterprises like Countrywide and New Century. The victims were millions of investors worldwide (like the pensioners who saw their funds drop in value) and hundreds of thousands of individual homeowners, who were often sold trick loans and hustled into foreclosure when unexpected rate hikes kicked in.

In a larger sense, even the (often irresponsible) people who simply bought more house than they could afford were victims of this scam. That's because in many of these cases, credit simply would not have been available to those people had the banks not first discovered a way to raise vast sums of money dumping crap loans on an unsuspecting market.

In other words: if Bank of America hadn’t found a way to sell worthless subprime loans as AAA paper to the Chinese and the Scandavians in May, you can be sure that it wouldn’t be going back to Countrywide in June to lend out more money for more subprime loans.

And Countrywide, in turn, wouldn’t then have been sending masses of reps out into the ghettoes to offer juicy home loans to undocumented immigrants and refis to confused old ladies on social security.

This is as bad as white-collar crime gets. But to Wylde, it doesn’t rise to the level of being “indefensible.” Until they do something worse than this, we apparently should support the banks, and make sure they don’t have to pay more than a fraction of what they made off of this kind of crime.

What is most amazing about Wylde’s quote is the clear implication that even a law enforcement official like Schneiderman should view it as his job to “do everything we can to support” Wall Street. That would be astonishing interpretation of what a prosecutor's duties are, were it not for the fact that 49 other Attorneys General apparently agree with her.

In Schneiderman we have at least one honest investigator who doesn’t agree, which is to his great credit. But everyone else is on Wylde’s side now. The Times story claims that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and various Justice Department officials have been leaning on the New York AG to cave, which tells you that reining in this last rogue cop is now an urgent priority for Barack Obama.

Why? My theory is that the Obama administration is trying to secure its 2012 campaign war chest with this settlement deal. If Barry can make this foreclosure thing go away for the banks, you can bet he’ll win the contributions battle against the Republicans next summer.

Which is good for him, I guess. But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

Wall Street Crash

"The Wall Street crash doesn't mean there will be any general or serious business depression."

-- Business Week

November 14, 1929



Sources: "The working person's history of the great depression," Show me the Money, Issue 10, Autumn 2001.

Bank of America's Back-Door TARP!

Taxpayer-owned Fannie Mae just bought the servicing rights to a bunch of bad loans from the struggling Bank of America. Where does it end?

By Abigail Field

FORTUNE -- Taxpayers may not realize it, but they just bailed out Bank of America again, this time to the tune of more than a half billion dollars.

The Charlotte, NC-based bank was one of the biggest recipients of bailout funds during the financial crisis. But Bank of America (BAC) continues to face deep problems related to its troubled mortgage portfolio and investors have battered the stock, which has plunged over 40% so far this year. That's escalated concerns that the bank may need to raise more capital. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has even started a BofA death watch.


But apparently the federal government is determined to resurrect BofA: the Wall Street Journal reports the feds have just used Fannie Mae, which is controlled by the U.S. government, to infuse BofA with $500 million and ease one of the bank's biggest headaches.

Yesterday afternoon on CNBC, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan mentioned that five of BofA's six businesses were making money. The one black spot was its massive portfolio of problematic mortgages and the liabilities flowing from it. Moynihan also mentioned that BofA had just sold some "mortgage servicing rights" as part of its balance sheet strengthening efforts, but he didn't elaborate.

According to the WSJ, Fannie Mae spent $500 million to buy the servicing rights to a big chunk of the "seven million loans still causing the most problems." Although the $500 million is a paper loss to BofA, in that the rights were "originally worth more," it looks like BofA is still getting a good deal because the portfolio's "value is expected to deteriorate further."

In fact, the deal is worth much more than $500 million to BofA, because getting rid of those servicing rights lifts a huge cost burden off BofA's shoulders. And if securitized loans are involved, which they most likely are, the sale also limits the BofA's potential liability to investors for its current servicing violations. Finally, the $500 million is surely more than the servicing rights are worth in an arms-length transaction. How do we know? Beyond the comment that the loans are expected to "deteriorate further," the goal of the intervention can only be to fix Bank of America's capital structure, which is easier for the government to do if it overpays for the rights.

In short, purchasing these servicing rights was another Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Servicing defaulted loans can be good business if cheaply produced foreclosure paperwork isn't questioned, and if the foreclosures have equity and can be resold easily with lots of junk fees. But the mortgage servicing rights Fannie Mae bought are stinkers: they have a 13% delinquency rate, which means lots of foreclosures and loan modifications.

Both foreclosures and mods have been big headaches for BofA, which faces potential liability for document fraud in its foreclosures on multiple fronts. Beyond that, foreclosures are simply expensive to do well. BofA was recently punished by Treasury for failing to do modifications well, and it's also been sued for how it does them.

But the loans Fannie Mae bought are even worse than 13% delinquency rate suggests. According to the WSJ, "more than half of the loans are in troubled U.S. real-estate markets." This likely means markets where a high percentage of the houses are underwater and there's a huge oversupply, driving prices down further and making defaults more likely.

Fannie Mae is purchasing "the servicing rights in order to transfer the day-to-day management of those loans to a different company." That's another huge sign that Fannie Mae is overpaying. If the rights were really worth $500 million, wouldn't a private company pay that for them? Instead, it sounds like Fannie Mae is doing a bailout two-step, one to BofA and one to whomever takes these rights off Fannie Mae's hands.
Another thing needs to become clear: where did Fannie Mae get the money to do BofA the favor of buying these rights? Fannie Mae just asked for another bailout of its own, seeking a new $5.1 billion infusion last week.

Think about how good this deal is for BofA: it gets to stop the bleeding, or at least cauterize much of the wound in its balance sheet that lousy mortgage servicing rights and mortgage securities liabilities are creating. And it gets half a billion dollars to boot.

And taxpayers? Well, we get to own yet another good chunk of BofA's mess.

Lets Take A Moment To Dissect Bernake's Latest Zero Interest Rate Policy

by: Bruce Krasting / ZeroHedge.com

I had this to say last week:

The Fed could easily attempt to buy some market peace by issuing a statement that the policy of zero interest rates would be extended for a minimum period of one year. I consider this to be a “high probability" to happen in the next 30 days.

I got it right, but I got it completely wrong. I feared that the Fed could extend the ZIRP language for as long as a year. Not in my wildest dream did I think they could take the extremely risky move of guaranteeing that interest rates will remain at zero for another 24 months.

Having been shocked, my thoughts.


*This action is indefensible on economic merits. This move is not motivated by sound monetary policy. It’s motivated by politics. This is a payback to Obama. Shame on the Fed for mixing politics with money.

*We will not go two years with this monetary policy without inflation (measured by core) exceeding the previously stated commitment by Bernanke that policy would not be allowed to rise above 2%. Bernanke and the dove members that signed onto this policy have lied to the American people. Bernanke has done it on 60 Minutes. He has done it to Congress. Shame on all of them.

*The Fed has taken away its ability to react to a situation that would require them to tighten. We are now on a one-way street. There is no way to turn around anymore. I believe the Fed has abdicated its responsibilities under the dual mandate. The have no ability to react if inflation should pop up in a year from now. Even worse, they have no policy options should there be a run on the dollar. The possibility of a run on the buck has gone up exponentially as a result. Should that happen, the Fed will have left us economically defenseless. Shame on the Fed for making us more vulnerable to a speculative attack.

*The stock market run up this afternoon is the Bernanke Put at work. Lets be clear on the consequences of Perpetual ZIRP. From this day onward every buy and hold investor who acquires Treasury debt with maturities of less than five-years is GUARANTEED TO LOSE MONEY. So if you accept that, then stocks have to look better. Shame on the Fed for debasing money and punishing savers.
*We have only one monetary policy. Juice stock multiples. This is the farthest thing from “Progressive” economics as you can get. We have a policy in place that is designed to make wealthy people wealthier. At some point there will be a social cost to this. The fires and riots in London were triggered by a shooting. Underneath is a rage between haves and have nots. Shame on the Fed for rigging the outcome for fat cats. Double shame on them for when our streets are filled with rage.

*Zero interest rates also means Zero risk. I think the change in Fed language will exacerbate recent short-term funding liquidity. I think we will see this appear (again) sooner versus later. I think Zero interest rates discourages leveraged investing. This policy will dry up liquidity in the asset backed market (Shadow banking system). I'm looking for evidence of this in the Euro Dollar funding markets. I am also looking for it to occur in the Term Commercial Paper market. Shame on the Fed for setting us up for this systemic risk.

*Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Indonesia are going to scream bloody murder over perpetual ZIRP. Russia is likely to get downright ugly with their rhetoric. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took this opportunity to vote with their feet and just abandon the dollar as a reserve holding. China will also make noise. They will make more calls for a new international currency to replace the dollar. The Central bankers in Japan and Switzerland are puking in the trashcan over this. Bernanke is exporting US deflation to them. Shame on the Fed for pursuing Beggar my neighbor policies. They deserve all the global criticism they are about to get.

*Bernanke bills himself as a student of the Depression. He has said over and over that he would not make the mistakes that the Fed made in 1937 when a tightening of monetary policy triggered another wave of deflation. I think the history books will look at the Fed and August of 2011 and draw a similar conclusion. At a critical time in history the Fed has taken action. The mistake of 72 years ago DID cause a recession that lasted a few years. The mistakes of 2011 will mark a point in history where America turned a corner downward. One that will take a few decades to recover from. The history books will shame Ben.

Black Monday? - Economic Collapse A Mathematical Certainty, The Top 5 Places Where Not To Be When It Happens!

The dollar collapse will be the single largest event in human history. This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth,our work,our food,our government,even our relationships are affected by money.

No money in human history has had as much reach in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the de facto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this big one. All other currency crises have been regional and there were other currencies for people to grasp on to.

This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies,as they are fundamentally no different. The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of ALL paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide.

Full transcript----

 "There is no greater disaster that to underestimate danger. Underestimation can be fatal.

The Dollar Collapse will be the single largest event in human history. This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth, our work, our food, our government even our relationships are affected by money.

No money in human history has had as much reach, in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the defacto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this "big one." All other currency crises have been regional and there have always been other currencies for people to grasp onto. This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies as they are fundamentally; no different.

The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of all paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide. The dollar is the world's currency. It supports the global economy in setting foreign trade; most importantly the petro-dollar trade. This fuels our corporate vampires and acquires and harvests' the wealth of the world.

The corporate powers suppress real assets like natural resources and labor to provide themselves with massive profits. The fascist statists, collectivist's model provides the money to the economy to fun an ever-increasing federal government. That government then grows larger and larger, enriching its minions, with jobs to control their fellow citizens. Finally to come full circle; the government then controls other nations through the military-industrial complex.

This cycle will be cut when the mathematical and inevitable collapse of the dollar occurs. In order for our debt-based money to function we must increase the DEBT every year in excess of the debt and interest accrued the year before, or we will enter a deflationary death spiral. When Debt is created, money is created. When the debt is paid-off money is destroyed. There is never enough to pay off the debt because there would be not one dollar in existence,

We are at a point where we either default on the debt, willingly or unwillingly or create more money or debt: To keep the cycle moving. The problem is if you understand anything about compounding interest is that we are reaching the hockey-stick-moment (on the graph that is the moment when everything goes vertical); where the more debt that is incurred the more debt that is incurred the less effective it is: And this leads us to hyper-inflation. There are only two actors needed for this hyper-inflation: The lender of last resort, or the FED, and the spender of last resort the government. These two can and will blow up the system.

I believe they will wait until the next crises and the whiff of deflationary depression before they fire up the printing presses. That crisis is coming very soon, at the end of the summer or fall. The money and emergency measures are worn-out. The fact that none of the underlying problems that caused the 2008 crises have been resolved: The only thing that has happened is that instead of corporate problems we now have national problems.

In this movie Greece will play the role of Leman Brothers and the United States will play the role of AIG. The problem is there is no where (left) to kick the can down the road: And there is no world-government to absorb the DEBT- yet. So this leads me to the top five places NOT to be when the dollar collapses.

Number 1, Israel. This Anglo-American beachhead in the Middle-East was first conceived by the most powerful family in the world; the Rothschilds in 1917. The Balfour Declaration said that there will be a Zionist Israel , years before WWII, and the eventual establishment of Israel. Israel has not been a very good neighbor to the Muslim nations: And has always had the world's two biggest bullies on the block at its back. When the dollar collapses the United States will have much too much on its plate, both domestically and internationally to worry about such a non-strategic piece of land. This will leave Israel very weak at a time when tensions will be high. This very thin strip of desert land will not be able to withstand the economic realities of needing to import its food and fuel or the political reality of being surrounded by Muslims.

Number 2, Southern California, the land of fruits and nuts turns into Battlefield Los Angeles . Twenty-million people packed into an area that has no water and thus food is not good to say the least. Throw on top of the huge wealth disparities, and the proximity to a narco-state and this does not bode well. We have seen riots from Rodney King. What will happen when the dollar is destroyed and food and fuel stop coming into this area? People will get desperate and do crazy things especially when a huge proportion of its citizens are on anti-depressants. If food and fuel cannot get in, what about Prozac? At a time when people's worlds are falling apart they lack the ability to deal with this new paradigm. If people come off these drugs too fast they will suffer psychotic breaks and you will thousands of shootings or suicides.

Number 3, England the land of the former Big Brother and the Empire of the worldwide slave and drug trade; will suffer heavily.

The "Stiff upper lip" that the British Elite ingrained in to the sheeple will not work anymore, as the British population explodes. The humans character will sacrifice for a foreign enemy, but not if the enemy has always been the elite. The Anglo-American Empire may pull off another false flag to distract its population but I feel this collapse will happen before they pull it off. This will make all eyes point at the British Elite as being solely responsible for this catastrophe. We have seen massive riots for soccer-matches with Hooligans. What will happen when this island with very little food and fuel gets cut off?

Number 4, New York City ; another large urban area living too high on the dollar-hog. There is little doubt that all of the wealth in New York City , New Jersey , and Connecticut is derived off of Wall Street Wealth. The savings and investments of the whole nation and much of the world flows through this financial capital. As the world wakes up to the massive financial fraud; this will lead to the destruction of capital like we have never seen before (the picture is of NYC in ruins just as Berlin looked after the West bombed it into Oblivion at the end of WWII).This will have tremendous effects upon the regional economy, as people driving in Mercedes suddenly wonder where their next meal is coming from.

Number 5, Washington D.C. The political collapse of the Federal Government will reek havoc on the hugely inflated local economy as more and more states find it necessary to assert their natural control the federal government will suddenly lose power and importance, as the whole world suffers from a global Hurricane Katrina (the city in flames).

The money that they create and spend will become worthless and government minion's pensions will evaporate. Millions that once relied upon the ability to force others to send their money to them, will learn that the real power has always been at the most local level. Massive decentralization will be the answer to 'Globalization Gone Mad. ' Local families and communities will forego spending money and power out of their communities as they will care about their next meal and keeping warm. As Ayn Rand once said: "You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."

To sum those areas that have lived highest on the hog on the dollar-paradigm will most-likely be the worst places to live, when the dollar collapses. Many of you will see this video with passing interest; but rest
assured this dollar collapse is coming!

It is a mathematical inevitability. We will not be as fortunate to muddle through this collapse, like we did in 2008, when it was a corporate problem." This time around it is a national and a global problem. The global Ponzi-Scheme has run out of gas: As the demographics decline; as cheap abundant oil declines, as hegemonic power declines: This comes at a time when we reach the exponential or collapse-phase of our money.

The irresistible force paradox says; "what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object: We are about to find out, when infinite money hits a very-finite world!

Peter Schiff on BBC Newsnight

Here is a great clip featuring Peter Schiff / CEO of EuroPacific Capital. In my opinion Peter Schiff is one of the few out there who fully understands what is going on right now in the financial markets. There is a lot of information to be obtained in this short 10 minute clip.

Here's The Problem With This Market Crash...

Henry Blodget

businessinsider.com

Well, it's deja' vu all over again.

For anyone who followed the market crashes of 2000-2002 and 2007-2009--especially the crash of 2007-2009--the 512-point drop in the Dow feels awfully familiar.

And as those market crashes reminded us, the downdrafts can last a lot longer and be a lot more severe than most people initially think.


(They can also reverse themselves quickly and unexpectedly, and maybe that's what will happen this time. We can always pray.)

But there are also several very important differences between this market crash and the ones a few years ago:

• The Fed has fired most of its bullets (interest rates are already at zero)
• Our budget deficit is already out of control, and Congress has had it with "stimulus"
• The public has had it with bailouts

That means the government's ability to do anything about this market crash is severely limited.

Yes, we'll almost certainly have a "QE3." And maybe that will prop things up a bit. But it won't fix the fundamental problems clogging the economy, just as QE1 and QE2 didn't permanently fix anything. (The only thing that will fix our economy is debt-reduction, discipline, and time.)

To get a good sense of how hamstrung the government is, you need only look as far back as last week, when Congress was so paralyzed that it almost put the country into default rather than raise the debt ceiling.
And you also need only note that, when the 2000 crash began, the US federal budget was running a surplus, and when the 2007 crash began, the deficit was only $200 billion. Now, the deficit's about $1.4 trillion:

Meanwhile, to get a good sense of how different the Fed's position is now than it was at the start of the last two market crashes, all you have to do is look at the chart below.

In 2000, when the market tanked, the Fed Funds rate was 6.5%. The Fed immediately began cutting rates and eventually took them all the way down to 1%. (Where it left them for far too long, thus helping to inflate the housing bubble.)

In 2007, when the market began to crack, the Fed Funds rate was 5.25%. The Fed immediately began cutting rates and eventually took them all the way down to 0.25%. Where they have been as long as anyone can remember. And where they still are today, just as the market is beginning to crash again.

In short, it IS different this time. And not in a good way.

Bogus Wall Street Profits Attract Investors

Trust your instincts on your reaction to the following:

Wall Street Headed for Record Profits in 2009

New government figures show Wall Street is on pace to have its most profitable year to date. On Tuesday, the New York Comptroller Office said Wall Street profits are set to exceed the record set three years ago, before the onset of the nation’s financial meltdown. The four largest firms—Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase—took in $22.5 billion in profits through September. The top six banks set aside $112 billion for salaries and bonuses over the same period. In a statement, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said, “The national economy is slowly improving, but Wall Street has recovered much faster than anyone had envisioned.” [1]

My take on this is that the Obama administration knows the following and hopes you don't:

1. These too-big-to-fail financial institutions are insolvent, probably even despite the trillions in tax-payer bailouts.

2.The establishment, including the Obama administration, cannot expose this insolvency because they are trying to attract private capital (investors) to overcome the insolvency.

3. Investors need to see the too-big-to-fail financial institutions as "good investments," therefore these institutions need to be seen making profits.

4. The "profits" of these financial institutions are founded on complex accounting gimmicks.

5. This is all being done for one basic reason: To avoid the social chaos that would follow if the bottom were allowed to drop out of these financial institutions, which would lead to loss of power among many in the establishment.

Source:

1. Democracty Now Headlines, November 18, 2009.