By GREG GORDON
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- One of Congress' premier watchdog panels is investigating Goldman Sachs' role in the subprime mortgage meltdown, including how the firm sold securities backed by risky home loans while it simultaneously bet that those bonds would lose value, people familiar with the inquiry said Friday.
Disclosure of the investigation comes amid a darkening mood at the White House, in Congress and among the American public over the long-term economic impact of the subprime crisis, prompting demands to hold the culprits accountable.
It marks at least the third federal inquiry touching on Goldman's dealings related to securities backed by risky home mortgages.
A spokeswoman for the Senate subcommittee declined to comment on the investigation, which was spawned by a four-part McClatchy Newspapers series published in November that detailed the Wall Street firm's role in the debacle, which stemmed from subprime loans to millions of marginally qualified borrowers.
In my post today, BarackObams: The Change You Promised Is Happening, on BarackObama666.com, I talked about the current fear politicians have of the people. I believe this all stems from Brown winning the election in Massachusetts which sent a powerful message, the people want change and the people are going to make change happen. The words of Thomas Jefferson as quoted in our disclaimer above are ringing true.
"When the people fear government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people there is liberty".
There is an undercurrent of a silent revolution taking place. We along with the many other blogs and inet publications have been waging this "war" for some time. It has fallen on deaf ears in Washington and on Wall Street as they all felt they were not only too big to fail but were also too big and too powerful to lose. Not so anymore. I feel the momentum rising. We are all just too sick and tired and broke to continue to put up with the corporate takeover of America. The Supreme Court's recent ruling (click link for more on this ruling), while attempting to preserve first amendment rights, will also be challenged by the people as it is just another step towards fascism and a totalitarian government by allowing corporations to highly influence and control elections hence our government.
From Wikipedia:...click here
In the economic sphere, many fascist leaders have claimed to support a "Third Way" in economic policy, which they believed superior to both the rampant individualism of unrestrained capitalism and the severe control of state socialism.[15][16] This was to be achieved by establishing significant government control over business and labour (Italian fascist leader Mussolini called his nation's system "the corporate state").[17][18] No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any such definition.[19]
We here at GS666 have been asking America to Wake UP and perhaps America is beginning to. But let me not be too optimistic. Until the results and actions of this sub committee are finalized and become public and definiteve legal and criminal actions are taken, I will still remain cautious and curb my enthusiasm.
Yet this investigation, which I have been calling for for almost two years, is a step in the right direction and a small but important victory for the people. It must be followed by investigations into JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi and the others that were all complicit in the scam that ruined our nation while they profited and lived large at our expense.
We will be on top of this breaking story.
My hat is off to McClatchy Newspapers for their role in this revolution and their work that has prompted this investigation. Thank you McClatchy - you are true patriots.
Read the full Miami Herald Report...click here
4 COMMENTS:
Goldman Sachs -the center of gravity-must be broken up!
http://inpoints.blogspot.com/2010/01/fear-itself-blocking-symbols-center-of.html
The people no longer have elected representatives; they have elected traitors.
The enslavement of the American people has been orchestrated by a pernicious Master Class that has taken the United States by the throat. This Master Class is now choking the nation to death as it accelerates its master plan to plunder the people’s dwindling remaining assets. The Master Class comprises politicians, the Wall Street money elite, the Federal Reserve, high-end government (including military) officials, government lobbyists and their paymasters, military suppliers and media oligarchs. The interests and mindset of the Master Class are so totally divorced from those of the average American citizen that it is utterly tone deaf and blind to the justifiable rage sweeping the nation. Its guiding ethics of greed, plunder, power, control and violence are so alien to mainstream American culture and thought that the Master Class might as well be an enemy invader from Mars. But the Master Class here, it is real and it is laying waste to America. To the members of the Master Class, the people are not fellow-citizens; they are instruments of labor, servitude and profit. At first, the Master Class viewed the citizens as serfs; now that they have raped and destroyed the national economy, while in the process amassing unprecedented wealth and power for themselves, they see the people as nothing more than slaves.
When the people said no to multi-trillion dollar crony bailouts for the bankers and insurers whose corruption had caused global financial mayhem, the government pledged to those elite insiders more than $13,000,000,000,000.00 ($13 trillion) of the people’s money anyway.
When the people expressed astonishment and anger that Wall Street planned to pay itself record 2009 bonuses, in the midst of America’s worst-ever fiscal and financial crisis caused by them, Wall Street stuffed its pockets with taxpayer-supported bonus money anyway.
When the people said no to a proposed $40,000,000,000.00 ($40 billion) bailout of AIG and its elite trading partners such as Goldman Sachs (an amount that subsequently exploded to $180,000,000,000.00+ ($180+ billion)), the Master Class went underground, covertly misappropriated taxpayer money and made the payoffs anyway.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Dougherty/jan222010.html
What should the regulatory overhaul look like...
I think Obama is in the right route. Hopefully he will continue to listen to the wise advice of Paul Volcker.
"Creating confitions for faiure"
http://montyhallparadox.blogspot.com/2010/01/creating-conditions-for-failure.html
Regulatory reform first should include the "regulators" doing their jobs and regulating what is already on the books.
Then, I believe the Glass-Steagall act should be reinvoked.
This may be too late, but no more government bailouts. If a bank fails, then let it fail. The smaller regional banks and Credit Unions will pick up the slack.
And most of all, eliminate the Fed and turn their function over to the U.S. Treasury where it belongs.
And lastly, this is one I wrote about in the 80's. Make the prime rate available to small business and have big business pay 1 or 2 points over the prime rate. That will begin to spur the economy from the biggest source of jobs, bank deposits and production.
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