Bailout Planet Earth: Scenes From A Worldwide Recession: A Photo Essay

Scenes from the recession.  A collection of 35 photos. 

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[DailyBail]

The legislature's Banks Committee and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal are issuing subpoenas this afternoon to force state residents who received AIG bonuses to the capitol next Thursday for a hearing on the details of those awards.

"There's just really a lot of questions to ask," Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, Banks Committee co-chairman said in an interview.

Duff said the committee is also going to subpoena AIG CEO Edward Liddy for questioning over why the bonuses were paid with federal bailout money. But Duff acknowledged unless Liddy owns property in Connecticut, the move is more a symbolic because the Banks Committee's authority ends at the borders.

http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_11958924

[DailyBail]

In a Daily Beast exclusive, one of the fraudster’s employees tells Lucinda Franks that the supposedly legitimate brokerage operations were in fact just money-losing fronts for the fraudster's scheme. Plus, what Madoff’s sons told staff the day after Bernie’s arrest, trips to the company’s secretive 17th floor, Bernie’s obsession with the color black and employee neatness, the roles of other family members, and visits to the founder’s Montauk home.

An employee of Bernard Madoff’s legitmate brokerage operations, which were described by the fraudster in his plea agreement as being “successful and profitable,” has told The Daily Beast that they were in fact money-losers that acted as a front for his Ponzi scheme.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-19/madoff-employee-breaks-silence/

[DailyBail]

This is outrageous.


By SERENA NG and LIZ RAPPAPORT

Credit-rating companies, widely assailed for their role in fueling the financial crisis with overly rosy debt ratings, stand to make a billion-dollar windfall in the government's latest attempt to heal the credit markets.

The new rescue effort, run by the Federal Reserve, kicked off Thursday with bond deals totaling more than $7 billion. Each bond issue will need to be blessed by at least two of the three big rating firms: Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services and Fitch Ratings.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123751980140092361.html

[DailyBail]

Chávez to nationalise Santander bank unit

CARACAS, March 19 – Venezuela will go ahead with the nationalisation of the local unit of Spanish bank Grupo Santander, president Hugo Chávez said on Thursday, weeks after officials said the purchase was on hold.

Since first winning office a decade ago, Mr Chávez has nationalised large swathes of the Opec nation’s economy and this year has moved to increase state control of farms and food production inspite of a sharp drop in oil income.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43484914-14fa-11de-b8b1-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

[Ain't Bullshittin']

Read Orwell's 1984...there are only 2 social classes now the haves and the have nots. There is a community feeling about it all where we are all for one...except the ones at the top are now filthy rich and don't like to share. I am not a rich hater but I see it the hardest that it has EVER been for the average Joe and Jane to just make a living. This phenomenon is indicative of class structure under oppressive kings and governments. Read your history books or check out Elizabeth Warren's post on the destruction of the middle class. Our leaders have run rampant and are drunk with power. This nation can fall just like any other that has ever been created from the beginning of time. Think this is bunk...what values do we express that our founders did? What truths do we hold self evident? The right for those with power to just make crap up as they go and accountability to only fall on the taxpayers shoulders? I know there are a good number of Citizens that feel strongly about the founding principals but I am speaking on those that make the LAWS that govern you WAY of LIFE. Show me the principals in action TODAY that made this Country GREAT and I will shut the f up. EVERYONE from Wall Street to Main street has BOTH hands out looking for something free. Here's a clue...THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.....

[DailyBail]

@AB

Terrific comments as usual. These bailouts have the possibility of destroying the positive American spirit and work ethic that have survived world wars and the great depression.

If the public doesn't soon see a change I fear there will be riots in this country.

I am sure there will be riots all throughout europe as we get towards summer.

I am afraid it's going to get very ugly.

[DailyBail]

Pay back the money and then you may pay your employees whatever you wish.

But stop fucking bitching about salary when your bank is on taxpayer life support.

These folks deserve the hatred.


By Elizabeth Hester

March 20 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., recipients of more than $100 billion in U.S. rescue funds, criticized congressional proposals to tax Wall Street bonuses.

Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis called the tax “unfair” in a memo to employees today, while Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit said his bank is “working in every appropriate way with policymakers.” JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon held a conference call with about 200 executives, saying the firm is concerned about retention and is working with lawmakers.

The banks are responding to an outcry in Congress over $165 million in bonuses paid by American International Group Inc. after the insurer received $173 billion in federal bailout funds. The Senate will vote next week on levies on bonuses after the House of Representatives approved a 90 percent tax on bonuses at companies that received bailout funds.

“People are very anxious about this getting too widespread, this notion that no one on Wall Street or in banking deserves any money,” said Seamus McMahon, a consultant with Booz & Co. in New York, who works with financial firms.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPe8yIbgLpto&refer=worldwide

[DailyBail]

I am seething at the sense of entitlement.

By Greg Stohr

March 20 (Bloomberg) -- Courts probably will uphold Congress’s effort to tax employee bonuses at American International Group Inc. and other companies receiving federal bailout funds, several legal experts said.

The House yesterday voted 328-93 in favor of a 90 percent tax on bonuses, including the $165 million insurer AIG paid last week after receiving $173 billion in bailout funds. The Senate plans to vote next week.

The measure raises a number of legal questions, and New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg yesterday said the legislation was unconstitutional. Still, any legal challenge will meet a significant obstacle: the historic reluctance of the Supreme Court to second-guess Congress on tax issues.

“Given the state of the law, it will be unlikely that the Supreme Court will strike down this legislation,” said Edward McCaffery, a University of Southern California tax-law professor who says he questions the wisdom of the proposal.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aC_hgTeumc70&refer=worldwide

[DailyBail]

Shut the fuck up you whiney fucking assholes.


Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ff2f77e-1584-11de-b9a9-0000779fd2ac.html