How Bernanke Lied To Congress To Pass The Bailout
TARP MOUSE
Bernanke's attempts to conceal his lies about TARP were ultimately undone in federal court, but no one in the media noticed.
By John Titus
More than six years after Congress passed TARP, the image of the stupendous $700 billion bailout swooping down like Mighty Mouse in his little pinstripe cape and green visor to save the day for everyone--not just Wall Street--has been bludgeoned into America's consciousness so relentlessly that it's almost above challenge.
Almost, but not quite.
According to a brand new video produced by a longtime dailybail.com correpsondent, what's been propping up this dubious cartoon version of history isn't any actual evidence--there isn't a shred of that--but rather a concerted media campaign hyping TARP as a success to the general public, facts be damned.
The black and white evidence of what was actually going on back in September 2008 reveals a much different reality than Mighty TARP Mouse promoters have had it all along.
In fact, Main Street's credit markets were functioning so smoothly throughout the crisis that it's impossible to tell from the data that any crisis was occurring at all. The media's entire campaign of a meltdown was based not on any evidence but rather on panic brought on by stock prices that were plummeting into the teeth of Wall Street's bonus season.
Today, the success of the media's pro-TARP campaign can be measured by the absence of any voice challenging the orthodox view of the TARP panic, with a particular void in the visual media challenging Mighty TARP Mouse.
On TV, any "debates" that address bailouts--and what must be done to avoid them in the future--proceed on the assumption, rarely mentioned and never questioned, that the 2008 bailout was essential to the well being of Main Street in the first place.
Levitating above these illusory debates is Mighty TARP Mouse Himself, so secure in His own Holiness that even idly wondering aloud if he's bullshit is regarded as an act of heresy.
Even movies that are carefully marketed as renegade challengers of the status quo in fact grovel before the Mighty Rodent--exactly like the herd these films purport to incite. Michael Moore's Caplitalism: A Love Story (2009) and Charles Ferguson's Oscar-winning Inside Job (2010) both offer up their personal sacrifices of the truth, overlooking the wealth of pubicly available data that expose Mighty TARP Mouse as a laughable fraud.
In the place of genuine journalism in America, we have a cartoon-worshipping caste system. Mainstream media's job at the top is to hand down bullet points on a given topic to "alternative" media outlets, which make meek adjustments and--if those are deemed acceptable--fob off minor variants of the orginal story memos onto the Starbucks crowd, which is too busy patting itself on the back to sniff out this colossal con job. Beneath this shameful dung heap lie the foulest and most disreputable outcasts--facts and evidence--which are unfit for Nirvana--the coveted iPhone screen.
Image courtesy of WilliamBanzai7
The result of all this is a belief system that frequently finds zero support from any evidence. Far from being seen for what he is, namely, a way to dupe Congress into forcing the public pay Wall Street bonuses that year, Mighty TARP Mouse is a sacrosanct religious icon in American intellectual life. This is purely the product of media myth repetition in a zombie monotone that would turn the most devout prayer-chanting church acolytes green with envy.
Coming from a culture that prides itself on rationality, scientific inquiry, and evidence, the blind and unflinching faith in Mighty TARP Mouse is odd to say the least, and speaks to very deep denial about what the media's real function is. Jesus H. Christ, at least there's some evidence of, well, Jesus.
It is in this pititful wasteland that a new video has just arrived attacking the $700 billion Mighty TARP Mouse with a ferocity that is at once truculent, downright rude, and refreshing, which is to say, with facts and figures.
Based on years of tireless research right here at dailybail.com, which since its inception in 2009 has defiantly pointed to mountains of evidence that the uniformyly pro-bailout media (yes, that means you too, Glenn Beck; you changed your mind only after TARP passed) is no different than the zealous flat-earth clerics of the Middle Ages, the video uses documents from the U.S. Federal Reserve to pick apart Mighty TARP Mouse so thoroughly that not even a carcass is left; even the Mouse's bones turn out to have been holograms.
Yet even the video's clinical carving apart of Mighty TARP Mouse, as efficient as it is--the entire video is 11 minutes long--doesn't represent the real achievement here.
That distinction belongs to the fate of Mighty TARP Mouse's creator, one Mr. Benjamin Bernanke, whose motives for pushing the false bailout image onto the public are fully revealed and downright shocking.
It's the road less traveled that the video takes--through the Fed's own documents and its legal efforts to conceal its bailout efforts on behalf of global megabanks--that's such an eye-opener. Shouldn't this road of hard evidence be paved by now?
Alas...
Using a timeline of events, the video reveals that then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke "knew he was lying to Congress when he told them" that Main Street needed a bailout to avoid imminent collapse.
The video documents the fact that at the same time Bernanke was telling Congress that Main Street was in dire straits, he was in fact secretly planning an even bigger bailout than TARP, one that altogether excluded Main Street. Moreover, Mr. Bernanke gets impaled on the Fed's own research, which shows that Main Street markets were immune from the panic on Wall Street.
What's more telling yet is that the Fed waited to announce its own bailout, called the "Commercial Paper Funding Facility," until 4 days after TARP narrowly passed Congress amid Main Street fury.
As the video points out, had the Fed tipped its hand that it was about to unleash its $800 billion CPFF facility before TARP passed--a facility that excluded Main Street by design and included foreign megabanks instead--Congress might have started asking Bernanke questions about whose bacon Mighty TARP Mouse was really saving.
What is more, after the CPFF disbursements had been made across the globe, Mr. Bernanke refused to answer exactly that question. Instead, he concealed the fact that most of the $800 billion went to foreigners. Bernanke and the Fed then took their fight for concealment of names and numbers all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately losing to a lone and determined reporter from Bloomberg named Mark Pittman.
Somehow the media missed out on this very real and very poignant David vs. Goliath story.
The video's timeline ties all of these events together in a scathing expose of Mr. Bernanke's false representations to Congress, as well as his motives for making them. The video leaves no doubt that Mr. Bernanke cared for Main Street only insofar as he could use it as a character in his fictional tale of danger that he was selling to Congress.
And Lo! The Immaculate Conception of Almighty TARP Mouse came to pass.
The video, "Ben Bernanke's Sovereign Deception," is available in full HD on youtube and was produced by John Titus, a patent litigator in the federal courts and a longtime conributor to dailybail.com
Apr 8, 2016 at 4:28 PM
Reader Comments (84)
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/other-headlines-recount-an-attempt-to-kill-italian-crown-news-photo/51311238
Thanks for letting Cheyenne's latest fly, DB. Much appreciated.
The balls on that guy... Pittman's story reads like an indictment of today's corporate media.
Actually, with the benefit of hindsight, the deal allowed the DOJ to continue concealing the fact that both Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer lied to Congress about the use of "outside" systemic risk experts. The only real outside systemic risk experts that the DOJ ever consulted were agents of the criminal banks themselves. Holder and Breuer, though, both lied by claiming that the so-called experts were government regulators.
Despite two separate congressional investigations, however, the DOJ was never able to produce so much as a shred of evidence that it had consulted government regulators. That was a lie. The evidence shows that the DOJ did consult with banking representatives who freely opined to the DOJ that prosecuting their clients would create systemic risk.
The HSBC deal allows the DOJ to claim that the investigation of the bank is ongoing. The case is still on the docket in the Eastern District of New York, after all, which makes the DOJ's claim superficially plausible. If Lynch hadn't kept the case on the docket, the "outside" government expert claims by Holder and Breuer would unravel immediately, as the DOJ would be wholly unable to point to a single systemic risk expert within the government. As things stand, though, the DOJ can claim "ongoing" investigation and then pretend that ti's refusing to identify such experts--who in fact do not exist and never existed (at least not in the government, as EH and LB claim).
This is all laid out in a video I did a few months ago....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW4o2eRvzx4
Incidentally, the DOJ lawyer who actually made the "ongoing investigation" claim in lieu of providing expert names to Congress was a 17-year DOJ veteran named Mythili Raman. You'll never guess where she ended up just a few months after the congressional hearing in question.
Yup. Good old Covington & Burling, the same firm that represents every TBTF bank in the U.S. and that gave us Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer. Raman is now Breuer's partner there.
The corruption is so out in the open, so blatant, so in-your-face now, it's just astounding.
Odd that Bill Black whiffed on this one.
But then the average Americans memory is only a couple of minutes long, thankfully for the politicians sake.
Dude isn't quite sure exactly what is next. Priceless.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w83SHD7a-mU
"Loretta Lynch supporters stage hunger strike to urge confirmation"
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/loretta-lynch-supporters-hunger-strike-confirmation-116994.html?ml=po
skinflint, I enjoyed that clip immensely. I bet he peed a little.
Former Managing Director of Lehman Brothers and current Governor of Ohio with two previous NRA F's for his support of scary black rifle bans and high capacity mag bans is awaiting a sign from the Divine in order to run for POTUS.
I personally would not vote for the janitor of Lehman for dog catcher, but here we go again with the masses and the 5 minute memories...
You just can't make this stuff up.
Here you go Gomp. Whilst driving around DC today I got to listen as Congress went about abdicating their role in trade agreements. They are trying to fast track the TPP and give Obama the reins in negotiating the deal that has been worked on by a bunch of soft handed pussies who are not in the business of representing the citizenry of the US. Your fine state of Ohio figured in a few of the speeches today. When the bi makes it to the Congress, they can vote up or down and ARE NOT allowed to proffer changes to the bill. Does this not make it a law if they pass this monstrosity? It was a good day to scream at the inside of my glass as I hollered and swore like an idiot. Just bend me over.
We have never passed a trade agreement that benefits American interests, and if TPP passes it will only get worse. When you put the decision of fairness into the hands of politicians, only the lobbyists will win...
I'm setting up shop there for future videos, not that you'd ever notice on youtube.
Loretta Lynch's vote is today. She's a certified kleptocrat and thus a shoo-in for AG. She's the one who engineered that ludicrous HSBC deal, under which the case is still sitting on the court's docket. It's a legal ruse that allows the DOJ to claim that it's not at liberty to disclose the identities of the so-called systemic risk experts whose Chicken Little opinions supposedly caused the DOJ not to prosecute.
That's nonsense, of course. Those so-called "experts" are none other than HSBC's lawyers and agents. Two congressional investigations into Holder and Breuer's claim that the "experts" were government officials didn't turn up a shred of supporting evidence or even one name. Contrast that with Breuer's express admission that he routinely consulted with corporate officers and lawyers when deciding whether to prosecute.
The American Banana Republic Theater is operating out in the open if you know where to look. (Hint: not on TV)
As for the recent "free trade" agreements, do y'all have good sources of info for that? The negotiations are secret, no? (I don't understand how that's legal, but whatever.) Paul Craig Roberts has an absolutely devastating chapter on "free trade" in his book, the Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism. (I've worked with him; he synthesizes info faster than anyone I ever met; so I may be biased.) He fully exposes "free trade" as a sham that doesn't meet either one of Ricardo's criteria for trading with other countries, and rightly concludes that it's just another empty slogan to justify gutting the middle class to enrich the usual suspects.
You know, the other day I was wondering why the constitution's authors were silent on the means for dealing with an entire congress that's corrupt to the bone and should be hanged to death en masse for treason, as ours should be, including that sham progressive Elizabeth "Pow Wow" Warren. Then it dawned on me: to the founders, the answer to that question was so obvious in light of 1776 that they felt they didn't have to say anything.
Recently it has been disclosed that 51 million illegals made it here during the Obama administration (last 8 years) according to various news sources. That a lot of democratic votes but I'm sure the Rep's also took advantage of that.
I will state confidently state that most of the low income housing is primarily owned by wealthy Dem's, as well as real estate that is pleased to dot guv.
Loretta's confirmation came as no surprise and proved how corrupted the system truly has become.
I was glad to see Pitch show up and would like to extend my best!
Give em hell Cheyenne!
I'm really excited about Cheyenne's Best Evidence videos and saw this one posted here on the old Bail. Haven't heard from Steve in ages, but hope everyone here is well (Gompers, skinflint, et al.)
http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20150208/NEWS/150209368/101050/OPINION
That power house would not happen to be on the State line would it? LOL.
Good to see you still kicking as well Pitchfork....
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/11/16/the-nafta-connection-the-role-of-free-trade-in-mexicos-tragic-travails/
NAFTA & Narcos
Signed in 1994, NAFTA was sold to the Mexican people as a one-way ticket out of third-world poverty. For the narcos, however, it was a godsend, for the following three reasons:
1) NAFTA lowered the U.S.-Mexico’s border’s drawbridge for all purveyors of goods, whether legal or illegal. The border between the United States and Mexico is 1,954 miles long and the most heavily transited international border in the world. With NAFTA, the volume of trade across the border swelled, and pressure from business to move goods made it impossible for U.S. Customs officials to make thorough inspections for contraband.
As a result, it became much easier and cheaper to move cocaine from Columbia that had previously been delivered by sea or air, overland through Mexico. This gave the Mexican drug lords a central role in the logistics business, just at a time when a political power vacuum was leaving strategically situated local and state authorities ripe for infiltration and take over.
In the other direction, truckloads of U.S. guns and ammunition trundled unhindered through the border into Mexico and into the hands of these narco gangs. The sheer volume of licensed dealers — more than 6,600 along the U.S. side of the border alone, many of them operating out of their houses — makes policing them a tall order. And as the “Too Fast and Furious” scandal revealed, many of those guns, which were later found at crime scenes on either side of the border, were allowed to “walk” into Mexico with the tacit knowledge or even complicit connivance of U.S. federal bureaus such as the ATF, ICE, and the FBI.
Most of them ended up in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel, an organization that, according to some reports, was given preferential treatment by the Mexican army and U.S. authorities, in return for providing incriminating dirt on rival gangs.
2. NAFTA created a fertile breeding ground for narco foot soldiers. Twenty years after NAFTA there can be no denying that the volume of trade between Mexico and its two northern neighbors, the U.S. and Canada, is greater than ever. Still, most Mexicans earn less than they did in 1994 and nearly half of the population live below the poverty line. Perhaps most tellingly, defenders of free trade continue to tout the country as an attractive destination for foreign investment precisely because of its low-cost of labor.
By far, NAFTA’s most destructive impact was on Mexican agriculture. Within months of its signing heavily subsidized U.S. corn was flooding the Mexican market, putting millions of farmers out of work. This, in turn, drove waves of migration northwards or into the precarious fringes of Mexico’s fast-growing cities. For those who stayed behind, there was only one source of employment left: the drug trade. With poverty and inequality rife and U.S.-style consumerism being plugged 24/7 by Mexico’s corporate-owned media, personal ambition is now high and life cheap in Mexico’s badlands.
The problem does not stop there, however. According to a recent investigation by Greenpeace, new legislation by Nieto’s government promises to transfer land used for agriculture and even national parkland into the hands of global energy giants keen to frack every last drop of oil and gas out of Mexico’s resource-rich land. There is also increasing pressure from global agribusiness lobbies to open up Mexican corn production to the world’s biggest GMO producers like Monsanto, Syngenta and Dow.
If they get their way – and for the moment there’s only one Mexican judge standing in their way – millions more people will be uprooted from the land and chased into the towns. It would be yet another recruitment bonanza for Mexico’s criminal organizations.
3. Nafta made it much easier for drug traffickers to move their money. Another key, oft-ignored aspect of NAFTA is the liberalization of Mexico’s financial sector. In 1997 Mexico removed all restrictions to the entry of foreign banks. Now, 17 years later, almost all of the country’s major banks are part or fully owned by foreign entities, including Citi, Santander and BBVA.
Naturally, financial liberalization has made it much easier and quicker for investors, including drug traffickers, to move money in and out of Mexico, with the help of some of the world’s largest banks. In 2011 an investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency revealed that Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo, had failed to apply the proper anti-money-laundering strictures to the transfer of a staggering $378 billion – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s gross national product – into dollar accounts from currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.
For all its sins and its crimes Wachovia was forced to pay federal authorities $110 million in forfeiture and a $50 million fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine. Not a single bank employee was prosecuted. Indeed, the only person to lose his job was the British whistle-blower who exposed the crimes.
According to Roberto Saviano, the best-selling author of Gomorra and Zero, Zero, Zero, rampant financial liberalization on both sides of the Atlantic has also meant that drug traffickers no longer need to use tax havens, or at least they use them less than before:
Instead, they use European [and obviously American] banks. In the new book, I mention Antonio María Costa, the former Under-Secretary of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, who said at the beginning of the crisis that the European banking system had lowered its security barriers. In other words, they had opened the floodgates to drugs money. Costa has publicly stated that the European financial systems were as good as saved by the global drugs trade, yet no EU government has responded to his accusation.
As long as organized crime outfits have fat bundles of cash to launder and global banks an incurable addiction to liquidity, the illicit proceeds of Mexico’s deadly drugs trade will continue to travel along the digital freeways of today’s global financial system, unhindered and unmolested.
the Sinaloa's and Zetas are battling it out for dominance of the drug trade through Mexico.
http://www.ibtimes.com/congress-subpoenas-doj-over-too-big-fail-bank-prosecutions-1916999
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW4o2eRvzx4
it's about sixteen minutes long, so in condensed form, and in chron order...
(1) December 2012. Eric Holder admits that the DOJ has been using "outside experts" to make prosecutorial decisions regarding TBTF banks;
(2) January 2013. Frontline's Untouchables airs. In the show, Lanny Breuer likewise admits that the DOJ is using "experts";
(3) Late Jan. 2013. The Untouchables sets off a firestorm. Congress launches 2 investigations of the DOJ aimed at uncovering the experts' identities.
(4) Late Jan. 2013. Lanny Breuer sets the DOJ party line in a Reuters article by Alison Frankel: "experts" refers to government regulators, not to private, outside entities (such as the banks themselves, which of course would imply that the banks were exculpating themselves and the DOJ was doing their bidding--which is exactly what's been going on)
(5) Spring 2013. In response to congressional inquiry, the DOJ states that it has never consulted with experts outside the government. This is patently false, contradicting Lanny Breuer's express admission to the NYC bar ass'n that the DOJ routinely consulted with the banks just prior to exculpating them.
(6) Spring 2013. The DOJ cannot produce a single email, document, fax, memo--NOTHING, NOT A SHRED OF EVIDENCE--that it EVER consulted any regulator about the systemic effects of prosecution.
(7) Spring 2013. Congress sets a hearing date to grill the DOJ. At the last minute, the DOJ changes its witness from X to Mythili Raman, a 17-year DOJ veteran.
(8) Spring 2013. Settlement is reached in the HSBC criminal case, but contains an unusual provision: the case will remain on the federal district court docket. Judge John Gleesson speculates that this unprecedented move is a DOJ attempt to score PR points. (He's wrong about that, as we shall see.)
(9) Spring 2013. Raman refuses to identify a single expert in her testimony. Her grounds? That the DOJ has "open investigations" [HSBC; see (8)] such that the sought-after identities a privileged as they'd reveal info about active internal matters.
(10) 2014. Mythili Raman leaves the DOJ and becomes a partner at Covington & Burling, which represents all the TBTF banks.
Needless to say, the congressional hearing was a highlight reel of corruption (Republicans) and breathtaking ineptitude (Democrats).
There's no reason to think the current congressional subpoena is anything but Kabuki Theater. I'm afraid nothing short of 535 hangings will restore Article 1 of the constitution.
http://wallstreetonparade.com/
"There's no reason to think the current congressional subpoena is anything but Kabuki Theater. I'm afraid nothing short of 535 hangings will restore Article 1 of the constitution."
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/mcconnell-says-senate-pass-fast-track-authority-trade-143316089--business.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/sec-insider-trading-case-halted-over-in-house-judge-appointment
http://www.occ.gov/topics/consumer-protection/foreclosure-prevention/correcting-foreclosure-practices.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-30/former-senator-slams-washington-corrupt-sewer-calls-outraged-young-americans-revolt
This happened to me once. After having refused to do something unreasonable at work, my boss went on a profanity laced tirade calling me every muther effer in the book. After he finished and stormed off in a huff, leaving his boss and myself standing there, I told his boss I thought he was a dick. I was relieved of my duties as an employee there at that establishment. I know it's not tax evasion or money laundering, but its the closest I have come to such a situation. Just thought I'd share.
http://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/06/eric-holder-returns-law-firm-lobbies-big-banks/
What the article adds in the way of new information is the fact that throughout Holder's tenure as AG, the firm kept a corner office open for him awaiting his return.
Again, the corruption is out in the open for all to see. Covington & Burling could've paid Holder millions while he was at the helm of the DOJ, busily exculpating C&B clients from trillions in criminal fraud day in and day out for 6 years, and the media wouldn't have blinked.
When Breuer's sleepwalk of shame at the DOJ ended and turned into a sprint back to C&B, we learned that he would be paid $4 million annually.
I do wonder what Holder's Treason Bonus is.
FUNARO and CO PC RICO accusation against George R. Funaro & Co., P.C. "Funaro" "defendants in this matter by preparing financial statements and audits that did not reflect the true financial conditions of Allserve." US Wind Inc. Profile ...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/eric-holder-wall-street-double-agent-comes-in-from-the-cold-20150708#ixzz3fPUnQTlR
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-argentina-consistently-unapologetically-refuses-040104696.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/18/business/energy-environment/coal-miners-struggle-to-survive-in-an-industry-battered-by-layoffs-and-bankruptcy.html?_r=0
saying however the action is pretty obvious.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ewFw8n4LCNg
http://www.businessinsider.com/gm-is-struggling-to-hit-targets-in-china-due-to-falling-car-prices-and-weak-economic-growth-2015-7.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/goldman-sachs-agrees-270m-settlement-mortgage-bond-investors-1513622
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/ben-bernanke-will-work-with-citadel-a-hedge-fund-as-an-adviser.html?_r=0
=======UPDATE++++++++
Citadel Barred From Trading In China After Regulator Accuses "Automated Trading" Unit Of Manipulation
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-02/citadel-unit-barred-trading-china-after-regulator-suspects-automated-trading-manipul
Define irony: for the past 7 years, Wall Street's worst kept secret is that Citadel, the world's most levered hedge fund, has been the NY Fed's just slightly more than arms-length enforcer of market stability, by which we mean spoofer, buyer and otherwise "plunge protector" in the equity and E-mini futures markets. The secret got even less "secret" when of all the possible hedge funds blogger Ben Bernanke could have gone to, he picked the Chicago HFT powerhouse, confirming the cozy and tight relationship between the Federal Reserve and the firm which has been increasingly linked to market manipulation not only in equities but bonds and virtually all other asset classes.
Which is why Citadel must have been shocked to learn late last week that China had suspended trading at a brokerage account used by Citadel in China.
When the news first broke last Friday, we asked, somewhat rhetorically, the following question:
China Suspends Trading at Citadel Unit Brokerage Account: Nikkei. Are they suggesting the U.S. PPT is China's Dump Enforcement Team?
Rail traffic remains flat.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/31/investing/puerto-rico-debt-default-august/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iid=obnetwork