Hank Paulson’s Secret: Of Course the System Is Rigged
Hank Paulson knows the system is rigged (photo viw Wikipedia)
When former Goldman Sachs exec Henry Paulson was Treasury Secretary he apparently gave his hedge fund buddies extremely helpful and lucrative secret information about his plans to seize Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac while still assuring the public everything was fine. To a room full of hedge fund mangers, including many of his former colleagues, Paulson let it be known the companies would soon go into conservatorship.
From Bloomberg (I highly recommend you read the whole shocking article.)http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...ae-rescue.html
Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.
The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information — to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
This is an important reminder that we don’t have a meritocracy. We don’t have a fair or free market. Many of the people at the very top with all the wealth are not now making incredibly more money than regular Americans because they are super genius Galtian “job creators.”
Many of these people are making huge sums of money, because we have a system rigged for them, by them. A well trained gorilla could become insanely rich if it had the triple benefit of the Treasury Secretary giving it incredibly useful insider information, the Fed giving it effective interest free loans, and the special carried interest tax loophole so it paid a lower tax rate than a school teacher. http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...p5N_story.html
If our top government officials showered regular Americans with even one tenth of the favoritism they have shown to Wall Street, I doubt we would have people protesting in the streets right now.
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This is how the corporatocracy functions.
ALWAYS QUESTION AUTHORITY!
"I Know How to Beat Republicans": Interview With Former GOP Staffer Mike Lofgren
By Leslie Thatcher, Truthout: "Establishment liberals just don't understand what's happening and are too often supercilious, condescending and off-topic."
Read the article.
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/di...z/rKc9mnOxiCql
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This former GOP staffer skewers everyone.
Liberals for their lack of understanding as to what needs to be done to combat conservatives - and their lack of vigor in doing it.
Republicans for their stupid, empty positions and tactics.
Corporations for their nasty actions.
It is a must-read. I agree with all of it.
Carriers Admit to Installing Hidden App
The cellphone spying saga is heating up.
On Friday, Rep. Ed Markey joined Sen. Al Franken in demanding answers from Carrier IQ, the company that has worked with mobile carriers to install a hidden application that has the ability to secretly track nearly everything users do — including the keys they press, the numbers they dial and the websites they visit — on more than 140 million cellphones. Researcher Trevor Eckhart uncovered the secret app.
Rep. Ed Markey has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Carrier IQ.
News about the issue has spread like wildfire, and every tech blog worth its salt is on the case. Here are a few updates that have come in since we first dug into this issue Thursday:
AT&T and Sprint have admitted to installing Carrier IQ’s software on their phones.
The Wall Street Journal’s tech blog AllThingsD spoke to Larry Lenhart and Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ’s CEO and VP of marketing, whose carefully scripted responses left a lot to be desired. “The software receives a huge amount of information from the operating system,” Lenhart said. “But just because it receives it doesn’t mean that it’s being used to gather intelligence about the user or passed along to the carrier.” In other words, Carrier IQ has the ability to track nearly everything you’re doing, but it doesn’t necessarily do anything with all that info. Why should we trust this company to do the right thing?
Also of interest is how Lenhart and Coward passed the buck on to the carriers. They’re essentially saying, “We just provide the tools to spy on you. The carriers decide how they want to use them.”
HTC (the maker of the phone that Eckhart used to expose Carrier IQ) claims it doesn’t receive data from Carrier IQ. Nevertheless, HTC and Samsung got hit with a lawsuit claiming that, as others have suggested, the software violates laws against wiretapping).
Free Press is continuing to press Congress and the Justice Department to investigate Carrier IQ.
People are tired of these unwarranted, unannounced intrusions into their online lives. As Sophos analyst Chester Wisniewski put it, “the community is becoming fed up with being spied upon, our personal lives and habits being invaded through secret programs and increasingly complicated and confusing privacy statements.”
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/di...CAsXguBC/B7x5X
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I'm sure there is a simple, necessary, and benign reason for companies to do this.
For example:
This might create jobs (for various types of spies and blackmailers)
Offer something for their executives to do. (self-abuse)
Could provide other important organizations with useful info. (Police, CIA and FBI)
Might give other companies an idea to improve their phones and security devices. (Cameras that film you in the bathroom)
What's the problem? Just trust them, okay?
Corporations are wonderful.
Aren't they?