Where do we start? We start with the natural consequences of the Bush-Cheney administration's LOOTING OF AMERICA:
#1. U.S. stocks plunge on Bear Stearns bailout; wipe out week's gains
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-stocks-plunge-bear-stearns/story.aspx?guid=%7BDC2496D4-EC6C-43F7-B5D3-B8BE5B0E4540%7D
A slightly more informative article, "Bear Stearns Baile Out by Fed, JP Morgan" explains that
The Fed has slashed interest rates and central banks have injected roughly $1 trillion into the banking system since then, but the crunch continues.
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={FB1471C5-8532-4893-B2A6-4869733CCD98} THIS IS BUREAUCTRIC SPEECH, for saying "The Federal Reserve Has PRINTED ONE TRILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF BILLS, TO 'INJECT' INTO THE MARKET"... i.e. into the BANK VAULTS of the MEMBER FED BANKS! PRIVATE BANKS!
The US press/media REFUSES TO EXPLAIN to its readers and the American public, that the FEDERAL RESERVE is a consortium of PRIVATELY HELD BANKS, that act as bankers, accountants, and paymasters for the federal government (the US Treasury), and that when the Treasury PRINTS UP ANOTHER TRILLION DOLLAR in bills (actually, ones and zeroes in the cyber accounts of member fed banks out there in cyberspace, but those accounts -those cyber ones and zeroes - can be redeemed for the real, actual bills and currency that the Treasury is spinning off its presses at any time) THEY ARE DEVALUING the DOLLAR BILLS THAT YOU HOLD in your wallet, pocketbook, bank account, or mortgage account.
THE ONLY SILVER LINING to this pending HYPER-INFLATION/STAGFLATION NIGHTMARE that the Bush-Cheney administration is creating, is that as commodities and assets gain in INFLATED value, at some point it will balance out the decreasing price of properties and commodity stocks from the homeowner mortgage/loan/banking/stock-market crisis.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Bush, Cheney, the US Treasury, the Fed, Wall St. and the press/media ARE ALL PARTNERS to MASSIVE, TRILLION DOLLAR _SOCIALISM_ for the wealthy, WELFARE BAILOUTS in $200 billion dollar chunks for the executives, big investors and bankers who would be GOING BUST were it not for that massive GOVERNMENT SOCIALISM. (To some extent, little investors are also beneficiaries of these massive government bailouts for investment banks and wealthy executives, but since little investors are actually getting creamed by the market, it is not so much "welfare socialism" for them.)
Greg Palast documents some of these hard truths about the Bush-Cheney banking/fiscal/treasury nightmare far better than his fellow writers in the "major media" do, if you can wade through his muckraking writing style:
http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/
And of course their is the obligatory Presidente Bush stating "THE DOLLAR and US economy ARE STRONG!" even as major investment bank Bear Stearns sheds HALF of its value overnight, THREATENING TO DRAG THE ENTIRE US STOCK MARKET DOWN WITH IT, propped up from losing the other 50% of its value ONLY by the Fed SOCIALISM FOR PREDATORY BANKERS and BUSH CRONY EXECUTIVES BAILOUTS.
Bush: "THE FOUNDATION" of his crumbling economy "IS SOLID"
[IF, that is, you pump in enough taxpayer subsidy Welfare Socialism for Big Bankers "liquidity" BAILOUTS for his corrupt, lying cronies.]
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={3ADBA892-9214-4ED8-940B-548926D1AE86}
Here is a back-handed, poorly written (gossipy) column by Wall St. market-watcher David Callaway, that (cut through his gossipy BS) states that former New York Attorney General ELIOT SPITZER was one of the VERY FEW individuals who actually has the power and ability to REIGN IN THE MASSIVE PENCHANT of Wall St. Investment banks to ENGAGE IN MASSIVE FRAUD and gold-plate worthless paper fakery. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={D74A985B-FE85-4DB3-BF02-9885DFB76D6C}
In this excerpt from his column, Greg Palast spells the process out. THIS IS INFORMATION that America's MAJOR MEDIA whores are either GROSSLY IGNORANT OFF (in which they are overpaid, incompetent FRAUDS), or purposely NOT TELLING AMERICANS ABOUT - in which case they are PARTY TO, COMPLICIT IN that massive investment banking frauds.
http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.
Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called “securitization.”
What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinning’s, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into “tranches” of bonds which were stamped “AAA” - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).
When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.
