Test post: A SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE story you won't read in the CM$M.

z-z-Z's picture

How the sub-prime mortgage fraud fiasco - the billion dollar bailout with taxpayer funds for bankers and investment bankers - and the Eliot Spitzer naughty/naughty penis media frenzy story - are all tied together with a big huge red bow.

~~~~~

Eliot’s Mess

The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked

By Greg Palast
Reporting for Air America Radio’s Clout

March 14th, 2008

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.

How? Follow the money.

The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.

Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’

Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Much more at link,..

http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/

Comments

z-z-Z's picture

YEAH,... IT WOYRKED

hello or goodbye

McJ's picture

I agree that the wrong

I agree that the wrong people (person) are going down here but the thing I can't understand is how this guy could have been so stupid. He had to have known this could be used against him. I just don't get it. I guess if it wasn't this, the banking predators would have found or manufactured some other scandal. Very sad...

I like the avatar - lil devil!sticking out tongue

Now you can try this - courtesy of NJT:

At the top of your post, paste the table tag as follows:

Note: You do NOT need the < br /> tag, I just can't figure out why it's showing up or how to get rid of it! If you do include it, it won't really hurt anything; just will add an extra line break.

Then to begin a green table; paste this:

Wherever you want the green table to end, paste;

and paste the same at the very bottom of your post so you don't end up with a run-on table wink

"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. Steal a little and they put you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king" ~~Bob Dylan~~

McJ's picture

It Woryked???

Is that an east coast accent you have there? laughing out loud

"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. Steal a little and they put you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king" ~~Bob Dylan~~

admin's picture

you passed the test

congratulations party time! cheer party time! cheer
-NJT

z-z-Z's picture

I like this,..

I like this,.. it is like bu$h after a few bottles of beer and a couple of lines of coke, maybe a few pipe fulls of opium.

(the cheerleader thing -[pom-pom girl smiley]- reminds me of bu$h drunk/but still head cheerleader)

cheercheercheercheercheer
beauty, ehbeauty, ehbeauty, ehbeauty, eh
cheercheercheercheercheer

:::::::::::

Thanks for the help in negotiating the maze - all. Special thnx to McJ for the pointers. Link.

McJ's picture

lol

rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. Steal a little and they put you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king" ~~Bob Dylan~~

z-z-Z's picture

Jesus Christ,.. those damn money changers again

The Voice of the White House

Washington , D.C. March 8, 2008 : “I knew, and wrote, some time ago that the hedge funds were mostly Ponzi-type frauds. Wealthy people looking for a safe place for their investments, put enormous sums of money into these organizations, enriching their founders beyond belief. One of my contacts is in the FBI’s White Collar Crime section and about a year ago told me, in confidence, that the entire hedge fund complex was nothing but a fraud; that there was almost no money left in any of them. He said those who were running this had been making huge deposits in Israeli banks from whence it could never be recovered and then when the investors discovered that they had been defrauded and they could not get their money back, the perps, like the army of owners of fake mortgage companies, would quickly join their funds. Let me say this, friends, if you or your relatives put money into a hedge fund, just try to get it out. You can’t, of course, because it isn’t there any more. And what can you do about it? Nothing. And many hedge fund operators have wisely donated huge sums of money to Republican and presidential entities, ensuring that investigations would be thwarted long enough to allow the perps to cash out their American-based assets (like billion dollar homes, yachts, summer estates and office buildings) and flee to a warmer climate where they only have to worry about Hezbollah rockets and not the FBI.”

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2822.htm

~~~~~

[...]
Apart from my un-disclosable investigation, the other calls were about how Jacob "Kobi" Alexander was able to flee with more than $60 million dollars last week, several months after it was public knowledge that he and the other Israelis working with Comverse Technology, Ltd. had swindled hundred of millions through fraudulent stock options trades. This has been going on for years, and The Wall Street Journal and Globes (Israel) reported the names and the amounts last March. For crying out loud, my newspaper, American Free Press, reported it in April 2005.

I wanted to know from the SEC and the U.S. Attorney's office how this Kobi Alexander was able to wire $60 million to his account in Israel and flee New York without any body stopping him. "If I wired $5 million to Norway the whole NSA and FBI would be all over me," I said.

The U.S. Attorney's office said they "expect" Kobi will turn himself in. Note to the wise: Don't count on it.

Kobi Alexander was one of the owners and developers of Odigo software which allowed Israelis to communicate instantly on 9/11. It was via the "buddy system" on Odigo software, which allows one to communicate to a large group of people that share a trait, such as the Hebrew language, that thousands of Israelis were warned not to go to the twin towers on 9/11.

Kobi Alexander's Mossad-linked company, Comverse Technology, was a developer and owner of Odigo since early 2000, something The New York Times does not consider to be part of "All the News that's Fit to Print." Comverse makes a black box system called the "Audio Disk" that police, intelligence and security agencies, and governments around the world, have attached to their phone networks. This simple device allows the Israeli employees of Comverse back in Tel Aviv to hear and intercept all the data being exchanged by these naive agencies...everything.

Hello...?

http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=6924

z-z-Z's picture

PRIVATIZED SOCIAL SECURITY FUND INVESTMENTS

Aren't these the Wall Street wizards the same boys His Chimpliness wanted to hand off the Privatized Social security funds to so that baby boomers could realize a much higher rate of return for their retirement insurance fund investments ? These same Wall Street sub-prime swindle artists are the same people "W" wanted to entrust our social security retirement funds and hand over full fiduciary responsibilities - to these bandits, pilfers, and plunderers.

What a delightful idea. They only seek to privatize those investments of retirement money so that they can plunder those funds to.

z-z-Z's picture

Failed investment banker gobbled by J.P Morgan/Chase

J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share in a stock-swap transaction, people familiar with the matter say. J.P. Morgan will exchange 0.05473 shares of its common stock per one share of Bear Stearns stock. Both boards have approved the transaction.

People familiar with the discussions said all sides were pushing hard to complete an agreement before financial markets in Asia open for Monday trading. "None of these things is done until they're done," Treasury Department spokeswoman Michele Davis said Sunday afternoon. "But I think everyone's expectation is sometime in the early evening hopefully" the deal will be done.

One stumbling point appeared to be the amount of risk that J.P. Morgan would absorb in any type of transaction. While J.P. Morgan is eager to snap up some of Bear Stearns assets -- such as its prime brokerage business that caters to hedge funds -- Chief Executive Officer James Dimon was reluctant to pursue the deal without certain assurances that would protect his firm's exposure, said people familiar with the matter.

Despite the emergency funding from J.P. Morgan and the Federal Reserve that was announced Friday and gives Bear access to cash for an initial period of 28 days, the clock is ticking against the 85-year-old company. Regulators, bankers and investors are concerned that the firm could plummet even further when markets open Monday. A continued exodus by parties that Bear trades with could even cause the investment bank to collapse.

Federal regulators also are trying to prevent Bear's crisis from mushrooming into a systemic threat to the stability of financial markets and other securities firm, for which confidence is essential to their ongoing operations. Unwinding Bear also would be a nightmare because it trades with nearly every firm on Wall Street.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120569598608739825.html

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