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

Just posting a GREAT article by Greg Palast.

I hope, by the time you get here, that you've watched Zeitgeist.

By Greg Palast
Reporting for Air America Radio’s Clout

Listen to Palast on Clout at www.GregPalast.com

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 it’s 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 chuck 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 a month 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. Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s

Racists have no place anywhere, but espcially here!

This is the letter I wrote - me, a Canadian - to the Obama Campaign in protest of his 'spiritual advisor,' who is a fear monger and who uses patently false information in his divisive and stupid speeches. This man, Jeremiah White, has NO place in the Obama campaign.


Sir,

I listened to a post by Jeremiah White on YouTube and I must protest this man and his point of view.



"Race" is a political construct that serves as a divisive mechanism used by the power elite. The term and the falsifications attached to it have no other purpose than to create hate and fear in people.

The skin is the largest organ of the body - please look this up. Skin serves to protect the rest of the body, regulate heat and cold and maintain the body's hydration system, among its many functions.

The colour of skin is nothing other than a biological adaptation to heat/cold/sun. Skin colour has no bearing on anything else. Add to that the dispersal of mitochondrial DNA in the international population and one quickly understands that we are all one 'race' despite our physical differences.

For Mr. White to hound on 'race' shows that he is bought in to using 'race' to divide and conquer.

As for his allegations that the fictional (yes, FICTIONAL) person Jesus was a black man in a white man's world, well that is simply appallingly false and manipulative. Jesus is a somewhat modern renaming of the Egyptian sun god, Horus.

You Tube:



Mr Obama, I write you from Canada, where we are very, very tired of the malicious, stupid, financially corrupt Bush administration, it's demonstrable, long term business and personal affiliations with the bin Ladin cartel and its drive to bankrupt the US and ruin other countries in it's pursuit of oil revenues and global government.

Your campaign has been extraordinary in every sense. Your willingness to surround yourself with exceptional people and to remove, with their approval, those who are brilliant but might compromise your campaign, is anything but usual. For that reason, Jeremiah White has no place among your supporters.

We in Canada look forward to the revolution your Presidency will certainly be.

This is for my "friends" in Texas...

...and for anyone else who's coming by this blog.

I contribute to a bunch of comment boards and various other places and I encounter - on a daily basis - people who still believe the US government is out to protect them and that 9/11 was perpetrated by a guy in a cave.

OK. Let's go with that.

But in order that you and I are on the same page, so to speak, PLEASE view this movie - the whole thing (ok maybe skip the first 10 minutes but that is ALL).

PLEASE watch it. If you promise to watch it all the way through, with an open mind, and you come out the other end believing exactly what you believe now, I will have a discussion with you, by email if you wish, or via the comments section.

WHY? Because I am absolutely fascinated by those who can cling to demonstrably false beliefs and I really need to understand how and why you do that.

This is a real, from-the-heart request. I am really desperate to understand how people dispense with demonstrable fact and cling to demonstrable fantasy.

Someone please step up.

Thanks.