I was researching a post for the
Obama wants control of banks, refuses to let bank pay back
TARP thread and stumbled across some interesting information that I would like to share with the rest of the class.
First a quick background. The "Obama Wants Control of Banks" thread is based on an article from the Wall Street Journal which is basically an
opinion piece. The author, Stuart Varney, basis his opinion on a "true story first reported by my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano."
link
So I wanted to find the original story to get more information and I found this article:
FNC's Napolitano
Claims Bush Administration Committed 'Extortion' Against Banks
This is another opinion piece written by Jeff Poor that was released on April 1st, 2009, just a few days before the WSJ article. Now here is where it
starts to get interesting. Poor uses the same story by Andrew Napolitano as the basis for his opinion but blames the Bush Administration for the
"extortion." In fact in Poor's article he only references Obama one time stating that Obama was disappointed that "Former Merrill Lynch CEO John
Thain left Bank of America after spending more than $1.2 million decorating his office."
Poor has an embedded video in his article of the original report by Napolitano as well as the transcript. I didn’t have time to embed the video but
I urge you to use the above link to Poor’s story and watch it for yourself. If any of the resident experts here can embed the video on this thread
I would greatly appreciate it. Poor also has the transcripts from the video on the same page, here is an interesting excerpt:
[the Bank Owner] begged his board of directors to let him tell the Feds to go take a hike. The board caved. He was forced – the board was forced
to issue a class of stock just for the federal government. The federal government owns 2 percent of this huge bank. As a result of that minority
ownership, they now want to control salaries. They want to see his books and they want to tell him who he can do business with.
Keep in mind this was a successful, profitable bank, with no sub-prime loans, and no bad debt. The Banks reward? It is forced to sell minority
ownership to the Government and to be controlled by the same Fed that got us into this mess to begin with.
And there you have it, this is what it is really about. All the bailouts, all the finger-pointing and misdirection are nothing more than smoke and
mirrors to distract the public while the government slowly erodes your freedoms and weasels it’s way into controlling businesses, banks and the
means of production (not that we produce anything in the USA anymore anyway) through intimidation and fear mongering.
If you think that Bush was smart enough to figure this all out and you blame him, or you point your finger at the new guy and blame everything on
Obama then they have already won. The media will always polarize the issue into a left-right dichotomy and the Sheeple will hop on board the Crazy
Train as they pick their sides.
This is the perfect example, one excellent news-worthy story by Andrew Napolitano that places the blame squarely in the lap of a corrupt Fed, (White
House and Congress included), that has morphed into two OpEd pieces that point the finger at “the other guy,” while the men behind the curtain
laugh at you as they fall asleep on their gold framed mattresses filled with your retirement money.
[edit on 6-4-2009 by DrZERO]