I TOLD YOU SO

There is nothing like feeling vindicated. There is nothing like seeing what you have been saying for months appear in black and white on the front page of the New York Times. It would be silly of me to suggest that I pioneered the talk about banks profiting from A.I.G.'s near collapse. Perhaps people are suffering from bailout fatigue. Perhaps I am being naive to believe that anyone really cares about who did what to whom when the banking system in the U.S. hovered over the chasm of insolvency.

There has been so much prattle about "Main Street vs Wall Street" that it is almost to easy to revisit the subject. To the average American, stirred by the nitwits of the Tea Party, the bailout of the banks was a waste of taxpayer's money. I watched amused, but saddened, by an interview with two women who were attending the Tea Party convention or conference or whatever, where Sarah Palin spoke twaddle to cheering masses. I have never been a big fan of CNN with its breathless form of doom journalism and its often uninformed "experts" - but I salute the poor guy who was trying o get these two women to make sense. One was a small business person who said she didn't know anyone who had been helped by the stimulus program. The other was an African-American trying for a congressional seat in Tennessee. She was a "spokesperson" and she had yet to win the primary. Both were full of all the "talking points" which they clearly did not understand: no more big government, no more bailouts, no more waste of taxpayers money etc. etc. Nothing new, but it seems to be working - which proves once again that many people prefer the bumper sticker approach to well thought out reasoning, which tends to take a little more than five words.

But I digress. The Sunday New York Times front paged an issue that has been there all along; an issue that I have had a rant about; an issue that seems to be missing whenever the special committee to examine the causes of the financial crash questions bankers.

The Times story says that Goldman Sachs (and there are many others) took billions from A.I.G. even before that company staggered into insolvency and billions more after the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (or is it "plan") or TARP doled out about 180 billion to save A.I.G. Being an insurance company, among other things, they issued those absurd Credit Default Swaps which were supposed to protect investors (specifically big guys like Goldman)) from losses should their "carefully" bought Mortgage backed Securities go for a dive. You know the rest. A.I.G had to pony up. The government had to prop them up. People like Merrill and Goldman collected.

There is no better illustration of the collusive atmosphere that exists in the world of high finance. There is absolutely no question that the main part of Bush's TARP and succeeding bailout money from the Obama administration, went to the banks. And there is no question that without that bailout the world's entire banking system would have been in jeopardy.

Now that the Times has added more legitimacy to the case against bankers' greed, is there any reason why they should finally get to work to stop the madness with re-regulation. Don't hold your breath.

Frankly, I'm tired of being cranky. I think I'll go back topics like what to do with retirement, and how to live better by knowing how to cook.