At Mother Jones, Tim Murphy showcases quite a bit of Newt Gingrich baggage that will make it difficult for him to get the GOP nomination. The baggage falls into two categories: A) Newt's personal family values baggage and B) Positions that he has taken on issues like health care reform, immigration and the environment that will horrify modern-day GOP ideologues. Check out, especially, Gingrich's 2005-2007 position on health care reform, which dovetails quite well with Barack Obama's approach.
Herman Cain has now “suspended†his campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination for President of the United States. Mr. Cain cited “continued distractions and continued hurt on me and my family.†Mr. Cain had been the target of claims of past sexual harassment and a long standing sexual affair with an Atlanta woman. With Mr. Cain’s withdrawal, there seem to be four remaining candidates atop the GOP Presidential field:  Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Newt Gingrich.
Former Republican Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2012 is running against himself from his race for Governor of the State of Massachusetts. Governor Romney has also lost credibility regarding his efforts as a “job creator.†Romney’s  prior private sector business, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs purchased two Florida medical diagnostics firms, closed them and 850 jobs were lost; Bain and Goldman made $250 million on the deal. Romney’s net worth went up to some $250 million during this time.
Meanwhile, former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is running against what he said as recently as a week before his last statement on some issues. Gingrich is no stranger to controversy as he was cited for ethics violations and fined $300,000 while serving as the Republican Speaker of the US House in January of 1997. Mr. Gingrich has also been criticized for extra-marital affairs and leaving two wives as they suffered from multiple sclerosis and cancer. One ex had to sue Gingrich for child support as she suffered and survived on charity as Gingrich served in the US House. Mr. Gingrich had carried on an affair with his now third wife even as his second wife was suffering from cancer.
Today I received a mass emailing from Alan Grayson. I had previously heard about this backdoor bailout by reviewing an article by Bernie Sanders and see here. Nonetheless, I hadn't before seen the details of massive loans made by the Fed to banks and non-banks.
These numbers are mind-boggling. Click on Grayson’s link to the Federal Reserve report (below) with the outrageously sterilized title: “FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Policies and Processes for Managing Emergency Assistance.†Then follow his road map in order to see the problems with your own eyes. I've printed Grayson's entire mass mailing below.
Consider that the Fed created $16 TRILLION and distributed much of it to foreign banks. This amount is 20 times bigger than the publicly disclosed TARP, yet the American People were never given a chance to know about this or have their representatives vote on it. The banks tried to keep this backdoor bailout secret, but it took Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, neither Democrat nor a Republican (he is a democratic socialist), to raise hell in order to force the Federal Reserve to account for this backdoor bailout. And back then, it was believed that this backdoor bailout was "only" $2.2 trillion.
One more thing: The total annual tax receipts of the United States are “only†$2 trillion.
But, of course, based on the news media, you would think that the most important things going on concern Michael Jackson’s doctor and Herman Cain’s sex life.
--
Dear Erich,
I think it’s fair to say that Congressman Ron Paul and I are the parents of the GAO’s audit of the Federal Reserve. And I say that knowing full well that Dr. Paul has somewhat complicated views regarding gay marriage.
Anyway, one of our love children is a massive 251-page GAO report technocratically entitled “Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Policies and Processes for Managing Emergency Assistance.†It is almost as weighty as that 13-lb. baby born in Germany last week, named Jihad. It also is the first independent audit of the Federal Reserve in the Fed’s 99-year history.
Feel free to take a look at it yourself, it’s right here. It documents Wall Street bailouts by the Fed that dwarf the $700 billion TARP, and everything else you’ve heard about.
I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m dramatizing or amplifying what this GAO report says, so I’m just going to list some of my favorite parts, by page number.
Page 131 – The total lending for the Fed’s “broad-based emergency programs†was $16,115,000,000,000. That’s right, more than $16 trillion. The four largest recipients, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, received more than a trillion dollars each. The 5th largest recipient was Barclays PLC. The 8th was the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, PLC. The 9th was Deutsche Bank AG. The 10th was UBS AG. These four institutions each got between a quarter of a trillion and a trillion dollars. None of them is an American bank.
Pages 133 & 137 – Some of these “broad-based emergency program†loans were long-term, and some were short-term. But the “term-adjusted borrowing†was equivalent to a total of $1,139,000,000,000 more than one year. That’s more than $1 trillion out the door. Lending for these programs in fact peaked at more than $1 trillion.
[More . . . .]
During the deepest, darkest period of the financial cataclysm, the CEOs of major banks maintained in statements to the public, to the market at large, and to their own shareholders that the banks were in good financial shape, didn’t want to take TARP funds, and that the regulatory framework governing our banking system should not be altered. Trust us, they said. Yet, unknown to the public and the Congress, these same banks had been borrowing massive amounts from the government to remain afloat. The total numbers are staggering: $7.7 trillion of credit—one-half of the GDP of the entire nation. $460 billion was lent to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley alone—without anybody other than a few select officials at the Fed and the Treasury knowing. This was perhaps the single most massive allocation of capital from public to private hands in our history, and nobody was told. This was not TARP: This was secret Fed lending.
Hello, I invite you to subscribe to Dangerous Intersection by entering your email below. You will have the option to receive emails notifying you of new posts once per week or more often.
Thank you for your interest in DI!
Erich Vieth
[jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_button=”Sign Me Up”]
