You know Nomi. The former Goldman Managing Director turned journalist-author is a whistleblower of sorts, who seems to relish spitting in the face of the Vampire Squid. Just who gets busted in this clip? That would be Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Bernanke and Paulson, for starters. This one is enjoyable. We have the transcript and video. Runs 8 minutes.
- There's been a tremendous subsidy for the banking industry from Washington and a lot of it, I feel, has kind of been extorted on the back of public money in order to prop up a lot of the risk and a lot of the trading activities that Wall Street did then and is doing now, after the fact and after trillions of dollars of money from the government.
- And I think that is a pillage, when you take from the public to support your risk, that's not right. That's not the way things should be, and I think that is what has been accomplished by a lot of Wall Street.
- But TARP was only a small portion of trillions of dollars, literally trillions of dollars made available to the industry primarily from the Federal Reserve and the New York Federal Reserve, backing from the FDIC for certain money to be raised in Wall Street, not just what they usually do, which is back depositors and our deposits, and a lot of this therefore can't come back.
- We're talking about literally almost $13 trillion worth of subsidies to that industry, and that's not coming back, even if some of TARP gets paid back.
**********
- Right now, for example, one of the key economic advisers in the Obama White House is Larry Summers, and Larry, of course, Summers was Treasury secretary back in 1999 and that was a very important year. We're almost coming up on the 10th anniversary of the repeal of something called the Glass-Steagall Act, and he was officiating that ceremony as Treasury secretary.
- He's in the White House now and he came on the heels of, Summers did, of Robert Rubin, who was a fellow who was a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton who happened to have been a CEO before that at the firm I used to work for, Goldman Sachs.
- And so there's a sort of switchover into this very important administrative position as Treasury secretary to do that. Both of them had the idea that you had to deregulate the banks, you had to mix these commercial banks and these investment banks together in order to be sort of competitive in the global economy and that the U.S. would fall behind if that wasn't the case.
- Tavis: I was just reading an article the other day, and there have been any number of these articles that have pointed out the relationships not just born of these individuals around or on the Obama economic team, but articles about their relationships with Wall Street. Is the Obama administration in terms of this economic team too cozy with Wall Street?
- Prins: It absolutely is, because the other part of Obama's economic team is of course Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and he, and there was just a report out a few weeks ago, he has the number one person on his speed dial, the amount of calls he makes is to Lloyd Blankfein, who's the current CEO of Goldman Sachs.
- Tavis: We're referencing the same article.
- Prins: Exactly. Actually, on the back of that article I did another analysis looking at the prior Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, who was the Treasury secretary when the bailout was being formulated, at the same time that Tim Geithner was head of the New York Fed.
- The New York Fed is part of one of the 12 Federal Reserve banks that is closes to Wall Street, like, day-to-day that's what goes on. The chairman of the New York Fed at the time was Stephen Friedman, who happened to have been also on the board at the same time of Goldman Sachs. He was sort of working with Tim Geithner, who had many calls.
- In fact, more communication with Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary, was had with Tim Geithner, who's now the Treasury secretary, when he was head of the New York Fed as Paulson had with Ben Bernanke, who's chairman of the Fed.
- So there was this really tight relationship. Paulson came from Goldman, Stephen Friedman came from Goldman, Tim Geithner was working with them on the bailout, he's now the Treasury secretary. So not only is it a cozy relationship with Goldman, which represents a lot of Wall Street as well as the rest of Wall Street, but it's also we are in a situation where Geithner can't possibly say any of that was a mistake because he was involved in putting it together.
Read the rest of the transcript HERE
**********************
PLEASE email, facebook, re-tweet, share and take our stories with you when you leave. Our only weapon against the madness is GREATER AWARENESS. Thank you.