How liquid is Bear?
No liquid.
Bear and Stearns bailout.
Bear swallowed by JPMorgan Chase and backstopped by the government.
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, and Alan Schwartz CEO of Bear Stearns addressed a group of 400 stunned Bear executives and said “We here are a collective victim of violence.”
Using up to $30 billion of taxpayer mone–and without congressional support–the Federal Reserve immediately put together a bailout plan.
The last days of Bear Stearns.
Death of Bear.
Fat cats cashed out: Greenberg, Molinaro, Cayne, and Spector sold $57 million of stock before the crisis hit.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac face tough times.
Plan to rescue Fannie and Freddie.
Feds to take over Fannie and Freddie.
Fannie and Freddie bailed out.
Placed under federal control.
A federal conservatorship.
Not nationalization.
Government standing behind the debt.
Fannie and Freddie wield big clout in Washington.
FoxBusiness News “The U.S. government seized control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac placing liabilities of more than $5 trillion onto the backs of U.S. taxpayers.”
CEO’s to get golden parachutes.
Daniel Mudd of Fannie Mae took home $11.6 million last year.
Richard Syron of Freddie Mac, $18.3 million.
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are only the most recent and extreme version of Wall Street socialism,” wrote Robert Borosage.
That’s socialism the Wall Street way: taxpayers get saddled with the risks and the costs of the bailouts, while private shareholders reap the gains.
Ha, Ha!
No quick federal action on the health care crisis.
No plan to provide insurance to the 50 million who are uninsured in U.S.
No rescue of the 18,000 to 100,000 people who die every year because they don’t have access to health care.
More than 50 percent of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are now attributable to a medical crisis and 75 percent of those individuals and families had health insurance coverage.
Paul Stephens insurance meltdown, “I was downsized from my company and unable to make the COBRA payments to continue health care coverage. I did not realize that my inherited diabetes resulting in artery disease would prevent me from buying health insurance. While searching for a job I had to have quadruple bypass surgery. The result was filing bankruptcy to wipe out the medical debt.”
The government can’t seize the insurance companies.
Government intervention in the health care crisis will only make things worse.
We can’t use taxpayer money to fund a national health care system for everyone.
That’s “socialized medicine.”
That’s “big government.”
Leave medical care to the market.
And don’t look for government bailouts.
Don’t waste Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke or Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s time.
You’re on your own.
Barbara Calder and her family have been forced to sell their home and are leaving the country to get health care.
Insurers refused to cover her under her husband’s health insurance plan because she has a “pre-existing” genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
She said, “I want health insurance companies to be abolished because they aren’t in the business to care for the sick. Their main function is to make profits and the sick just get in their way.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Paulson was huddled throughout the weekend in the New York Federal Reserve’s fortress-like building in downtown Manhattan with executives from major banks and investment houses to hash out the fate of Lehman Brothers and to staunch the bleeding on Wall Street that threatened to shatter investor confidence around the globe.
HELEN REDMOND is a member of the Chicago Single-Payer Action Network (CSPAN.) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO.) She can be reached at redmondmadrid@yahoo.com
