Spitzer Exposes Bush and Cronies

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.

NOTE: This is an article based upon, and derived from, one written by Greg Palast.
***

Spitzer Exposes Bush and Cronies
***

With all the negative attention being paid to New York governor Eliot Spitzer, the real story of deep corruption and evil behind the scenes goes ignored by much of the media. George Bushs new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion to crooked bankers, in league with the bush administration. It is directly due to this horrible rip-off that millions of Americans are now being thrown out of their own homes.

And while the governor was using his own checkbook, the bankers were using yours. For the billions given to the bank, secretly, came straight from taxpayer funds. The bush administration was wantonly, immorally using the money of the very people whom it was forcing into homelessness.

This week, Bernankes Fed loaned selected banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars. This vast sum of money was given to banking predators who have brought two million families to, in some cases, irreversible economic disaster. Until his "pr catastrophe," the only politician who stood directly in the path of this gross evil was Eliot Spitzer. He was the one honest, and major, obstacle in the greedbased, nightmarish scheme to steal from the United States population. So, the public and media "lynching" of Spitzer was no mere coincidence, but was engineered by filthy rich criminals, cooperating with the full support of the bush administration.
The media have bought into Wall Streets lie that U.S. families are about to be ejected from their homes because they bought homes that they simply could not afford. They, says thhis lie, took out loans too big for their budgets. But the victim is not the culprit here.
Since the bush regime came to power, a new type of subtly dishonest loan appeared, with its full blessing. It was called "the sub-prime."
This was a type of mortgage. This included loans with very small introductory interest rates.
Abruptly, a company called "Countrywide" grew into Americas Number One mortgage lender.

For example, the Family with average household income got a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their monthly payback-payment was only $955. Their banker "kindly and generously" promises them a new mortgage at this inexpensive rate, in two more years. But when that time has passed, the promise is unveiled as a lie. They are ordered to evacuate their house, because it is worth less than the mortgage, which now zooms to 9% or $1,609!
Which Americans became the special victims of this government-backed lying scam? Not surprisingly, 73% of higher-income African American and Hispanic American borrowers were victimized by the "sub-prime" packet of lies versus only 17% of caucasians of comparable income! They were "steered," as its called in the "mortgage sharking" world. This kind of cruel and nightmarish dishonesty, which ruins families, is called "fraudulent conveyance" or "predatory lending" under U.S. law. This kind of activity was almost completely forbidden during the Clinton Administration. But when the bush regime took over, this obscene activity received only a wink and a nod from those officials who were supposed to prohibit these insidious acts.
But there was a "buzzkill" among politicians who refused to play this nefarious game: Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer! He threatened the nice comfy evil by actually suing these criminals!
Instead of conforming to the law, bush's regulators declared "war" on Spitzer! The bushies twisted a law called federal pre-emption" to order the states not to enforce their consumer protection laws. The feds actually went so far as to file a lawsuit to block Spitzers investigation of this ugly racial steering! Bushs bestial banking buddies were ferociously angry that Spitzer relentlessly pursued these shoddy banking practices nationally!
Countrywide's leader, Angelo Mozilo, will receive $77 million bonus this year, plus $656 million from 1998 through 2007. Much of this greed arose from the Gulf sheiks who control most of the shares in the companies involved.
Then, on Wednesday, Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. This shady company included James Baker, george bush, the bin laden family, and various assorted other dictators, clowns, and pirates.
This is when bush came to the rescue, and dumped two hundred billion dollars into the laps of criminal bankers. Not a single family-home was saved, but not a single banker suffered! Mozilos Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The stock of the Citi sheiks increased $10 billion in one afternoon. The bush regime did absolutely nothing to protect consumers. In fact, it did the opposite: it initiated an aggressive campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the challenging problems! The bushies turned a blind eye to the whole problem! Shades of Katrina!
Spitzer unmasked and exposed bush as the "predators' partner in crime"! He was a fugitive from justice, Spitzer said plainly, mocking the fact that the "emperor" had no clothes! Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote that history would damn the bush administration for its callous criminality.
************

Greg Palast, former investigator of financial fraud, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

*******