Thursday, November 19, 2009

Too Big to Fail: Too Powerful to go to Jail?

Based on the evidence available regarding the financial mess created by those who were literally selling junk packaged as assets, one has to ask the question: should some jail time be in order? Or are some of those who run the “financial order” too powerful to go to jail? Do they in fact run and control the system? There were those in this system who were giving triple A ratings to this junk. They were also getting paid big fees for giving it an excellent rating. Which begs the question: How could “respected” rating agencies do such a thing? After all, these people are the so-called experts in the ratings field.

Meanwhile out in the muddied financial field, the brilliant financial minds were selling this manure as safe and solid investments. These “investments” were sold to pension funds, mutual funds, numerous investors and anybody and everybody who would buy this financial dung. Some of the dung-sellers were paid millions in bonuses, proving that old saying rings true: “where there is muck, there is money.” Unfortunately, the people getting the muck were those who bought the useless waste from the money changers and the money changers got their money.

Big profits were made by some of these financial sharks who were touting this financial toilet paper as a good investment, and some of them were selling themselves out of this “good investment” and passing it on to others. One wonders, does this constitute a fraud? Or was this an “honest fraud,” whatever that means, in today’s society of mangled language? Still, one banker did say they did “wrong.” He also said they were doing the work of God. Which makes one wonder, how can one do wrong and be doing God’s work?

Meanwhile, the “working” political elites are travelling around the world at taxpayers’ expense, holding talks on fixing the monetary system. The solution is staring them in the face. They could start by jailing these paper-passing fraud artists and try finding out just how much money is stashed away in their offshore banking and tax-free havens and confiscate it all. But, that will not be done; the powerful are too powerful and the politicians are their dumb lackeys who have provided taxpayers' dollars to the exploiters of the system. Bailouts of billions of taxpayer dollars, called stimulus packages, were handed over to these manipulators of money. Now, the taxpayers everywhere will be paying and suffering for years and years while those who benefited from their tax dollars are allowed to walk away free.

These financial con artists are responsible for people losing their jobs, their homes, their savings, their investments and their peace of mind. In my mind, I believe, a fraud of massive proportions has been perpetrated. The fraud artists have been compensated with taxpayers’ dollars and the losers are the decent people everywhere who believed in the honesty of the financial system.

Stephen. J. Gray
November 19, 2009.