Frank Rich, former "lifestyle" columnist and now editor of the New York Times, lays out an editorial MASTERPIECE: a swift review of the past decade, how government and business 'leaders', both Democrat and Republican, paved the way for America's current TRILLIONS-of-dollars economic meltdown, with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of FRAUDULENT ACCOUNTING, vastly overstated assets, suppression of open reporting and transparency - with DOZENS of banks, business executives, and government officials ECHOING and REPEATING the basic template of ENRON massive ACCOUNTING FRAUD, and Bush-Cheney co's. LIES-to-WAR.
IN particular, Rich details FORMER CLINTON/Democrat TREASURY SECRETARY ROBERT RUBIN as being in on the Wall Street con game:
==================================
Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich
[i.e. a small-time, comparatively honest hoodlum compared to the predatory sharks, parasitic bankers, and massive fraudsters of Wall St., Washington, and corporate America.]
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14rich.html
<< Regulators had failed to see the iceberg in Enron’s path and so had Enron’s own accountants at Arthur Andersen, a corporate giant whose parallel implosion had its own casualty list of some 80,000 jobs. Despite Bush’s post-Enron call for “a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business community,” the exact opposite has happened in the six years since. Warren Buffett’s warning in 2003 that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction” was politely ignored. Much larger companies than Enron figured out how to place even bigger and more impenetrable gambles on derivatives, all the while piling up unseen debt. They built castles of air on a far grander scale than Kenny Boy could have imagined, doing so with sheer stupidity and cavalier, greed-fueled carelessness rather than fraud. >>
<< The most stupendous example as measured in dollars is Citigroup, now the recipient of potentially the biggest taxpayer bailout to date. The price tag could be some $300 billion — 20 times the proposed first installment of the scuttled Detroit bailout. Citigroup’s toxic derivatives, often tied to subprime mortgages, metastasized without appearing on the balance sheet. Both the company’s former chief executive, Charles O. Prince III, and his senior adviser, Robert Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury secretary, have said they didn’t know the size of the worthless holdings until they’d spiraled into the tens of billions of dollars. >>
<< It’s a sad snapshot of our century’s establishment that Rubin has been an economic adviser to Barack Obama and [Phil] Gramm to John McCain. And that both captains of finance remain unapologetic, unaccountable and still at their banks, which have each lost more than 70 percent of their shareholders’ value this year and have collectively announced more than 90,000 layoffs so far. >>
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THE STUPID, media-sedated American public TOLERATES MASSIVE THEFT of both the US taxpayer Treasury AND THEIR OWN SAVINGS, INVESTMENTS, (home-values, etc.) and PENSION funds!!
(note: ONe thing that Frank Rich doesn't quite get to in this information packed commentary, is the role his own employer, the SULZBERGER OWNED New York Times, played in all this massive, gigantic, titanic accounting fraud and economic meltdown.
That is, in the early-mid 1990s the new Clinton administration was only just starting to drag America out of the BUSH-1 RECESSION, brought about by the Phil Gramm led DEREGULATION of the entire US Savings & Loan financial industry, when the New York Times started perpetrating journalistic fraud with their shoddy, misleading, and often times outright LYING reporting about the hapless Jim McDougal's role in "WHITEWATER", i.e. the routine real-estate flops of McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan in Little Rock, Arksansas. The Times' RELENTLESSLY BAD reporting on "WHITEWATER" led millions of American "news" consumers to believe that McDougal's rural Arkansas "Whitewater" real-estate flop was THE CENTER of the nation's entire $500 billion (in 1980s money) S&L debacle; when, even by the Times' most hysterical accounts, McDougal's Madison Guarantee was bailed out by government/taxpayers for no more than $22 million. By comparison, Neil Bush's Colorado-based SILVERADO S&L cost taxpayers $1 BILLION in losses; and President Bush Sr., in FIRING the fed criminal banking auditor fo CHARLES KEATING's "LINCOLN Savings & Loan", allowed Keating to dodge a criminal audit, and continue Lincoln's operations for another year.... Costing taxpayers ANOTHER BILLION DOLLARS in losses, for TWO BILLION DOLLARS in losses for Keating's Lincoln S&L, ALONE!
In relentlessly putting McDougal's hapless "WHITEWATER!" flop on the front pages of the NY Times for five or more years in a row, the TIMES publisher and editors HELPED AMERICANS FORGET about the far larger, far more systematic S&L debacle - thereby paving the way for good ol' PHIL GRAMM and his Democrat/Republican financial fraud enablers to REPEAT the ECONOMIC "DEREGULATION" tsunami all over again in the late 1990s!
(Authors Lyons & Conasons document the Times' relentlessly atrocious "Whitewater" reporting in their encylcopedic accounting of "THE HUNTING of the PRESIDENT"
http://www.amazon.com/Hunting-President-Ten-Year-Campaign-Destroy/dp/0312273193
(The contents, index, and several hundred of the authors' _25 pages_ of citations are included in the free GoogleBooks preview of the book.)
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Christ Mathews TALKS OVER HIS GUESTS - what constitutes "journalism" in America's whorrific media...
Fortunately MSNBC now has both Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to provide a SANE discussion of the issues, but this comedic clip by "236.com" video (a play on "news 24/7") captures what Mathews critics have known ever since he came to America's attention (along with Tim Russert) - spouting off "MONICA!" "MONICA!" MONICA!" 24/7 during the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton for __"lying"__ about his affair with Monica: THAT CHRIS MATHEWS TALKS OVER ALL Of his guests, usually so much that there is nothing intelligible on his show!"
Monday, December 08, 2008
New York (whore) Times follows Tribune co. in CASH CRISIS....
NY Times Co. follows Tribune co. in cash crisis: forced to borrow $225-million against its New York office building to stave off an immediate "cash flow squeeze."
We must note here teh delicious irony of the New York Times ATROCIOUS "reporting" standards (not to say "journalistic" standards) coming home to roost; for NO ONE in America is MORE RESPONSIBLE for the NIGHTMARE of this nation's current economic crisis than the LYING New York Whore Times, and the Cowardly, lying Washington Post.
AS an example, this NY Times own report, where the Times' editors, writers, and publisher (Mr. Arthur Sulzberger and family) practically JOINED Wall Street bank executives at GOLDMAN SACHS co., in PRACTICALLY GLOATING about the G-S __BILLION DOLLAR CHRISTMAS BONUS__...... in December of ___2006____, EVEN AS THOUSANDS of American families were BEING FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES, by the building FORECLOSURE CRISIS, the EXACT SAME CRISIS that would send FORMER GOLDAMN-SACHS _CHAIRMAN & CEO._ HANK PAULSON - currently President Bush's SECRETARY OF TREASURY - litterally BEGGING to Congress for $700 billion (ONE TRILLION DOLLARS+ in real costs!) in SOCIALIZED TAXPAYER BAILOUTS of the very banks and brokerage houses that less than two-dozen months previously had been GLOATING about their ill-gotten BONUSES, even as families were being EVICTED from their homes due to PREDATORY loans, credit cards, and health-care tragedy bankruptcies!
AND AT NO TIME did the god-damned NEW YORK TIMES or WASHINGTON POST _EVER_ try to make a CONNECTION between those Wall Street billion-dollar gloating "BONUSES", and the THOUSANDS of Americans VICTIMIZED by credit extortion, bullying, fraud, and greed.
Nor did the Post and Times speak our for MILLIONS of voters (_NOT!_ Mr. Gore) ROBBED of their votes by the Republican VOTE-STEALING EFFORTS of Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and Supreme Court Inquisitor Antonin Scalia in the Florida NON-RECOUNT of December 2000.
NOR did the Lying Times and Cowardly Post STAND UP FOR US Army FEMALE VOLUNTEER PRIVATES accused ONLY of "ABUSE" at Abu Ghraib prison and put on trial in the Cheney-Rumsfeld military's KANGAROO TRIALS, WHILE the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration DEMANDED THE 'right' to TORTURE PRISONERS TO DEATH, at THEIR SOLE DISCRETION, with NO OVERSIGHT or accountability TO ANYONE, EVER!
These are THREE MASSIVE, GLARING BETRAYALS that will show up 100 years later in American history, just like the dismal DRED SCOTT decision, and for these treacherous betrayals, ALONE (not to mention being party to and/or complicity with lies-to-war leading up to the Iraq war), BOTH the New York Times and Washington Post deserve to face bankruptcy and failure.
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NY TIMES Co. to BORROW AGAINST its NY BUILDING
by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, New York Times
Published: December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/media/08times.html
The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.
We must note here teh delicious irony of the New York Times ATROCIOUS "reporting" standards (not to say "journalistic" standards) coming home to roost; for NO ONE in America is MORE RESPONSIBLE for the NIGHTMARE of this nation's current economic crisis than the LYING New York Whore Times, and the Cowardly, lying Washington Post.
AS an example, this NY Times own report, where the Times' editors, writers, and publisher (Mr. Arthur Sulzberger and family) practically JOINED Wall Street bank executives at GOLDMAN SACHS co., in PRACTICALLY GLOATING about the G-S __BILLION DOLLAR CHRISTMAS BONUS__...... in December of ___2006____, EVEN AS THOUSANDS of American families were BEING FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES, by the building FORECLOSURE CRISIS, the EXACT SAME CRISIS that would send FORMER GOLDAMN-SACHS _CHAIRMAN & CEO._ HANK PAULSON - currently President Bush's SECRETARY OF TREASURY - litterally BEGGING to Congress for $700 billion (ONE TRILLION DOLLARS+ in real costs!) in SOCIALIZED TAXPAYER BAILOUTS of the very banks and brokerage houses that less than two-dozen months previously had been GLOATING about their ill-gotten BONUSES, even as families were being EVICTED from their homes due to PREDATORY loans, credit cards, and health-care tragedy bankruptcies!
AND AT NO TIME did the god-damned NEW YORK TIMES or WASHINGTON POST _EVER_ try to make a CONNECTION between those Wall Street billion-dollar gloating "BONUSES", and the THOUSANDS of Americans VICTIMIZED by credit extortion, bullying, fraud, and greed.
Nor did the Post and Times speak our for MILLIONS of voters (_NOT!_ Mr. Gore) ROBBED of their votes by the Republican VOTE-STEALING EFFORTS of Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and Supreme Court Inquisitor Antonin Scalia in the Florida NON-RECOUNT of December 2000.
NOR did the Lying Times and Cowardly Post STAND UP FOR US Army FEMALE VOLUNTEER PRIVATES accused ONLY of "ABUSE" at Abu Ghraib prison and put on trial in the Cheney-Rumsfeld military's KANGAROO TRIALS, WHILE the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration DEMANDED THE 'right' to TORTURE PRISONERS TO DEATH, at THEIR SOLE DISCRETION, with NO OVERSIGHT or accountability TO ANYONE, EVER!
These are THREE MASSIVE, GLARING BETRAYALS that will show up 100 years later in American history, just like the dismal DRED SCOTT decision, and for these treacherous betrayals, ALONE (not to mention being party to and/or complicity with lies-to-war leading up to the Iraq war), BOTH the New York Times and Washington Post deserve to face bankruptcy and failure.
==========================================
NY TIMES Co. to BORROW AGAINST its NY BUILDING
by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, New York Times
Published: December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/media/08times.html
The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Chicago Tribune "News" Co. FACING BANKRUPTCY !
ALL OVER AMERICA, America's "news" companies ARE FACING MASSIVE financial losses... WHICH OF COURSE SERVES THEM RIGHT, as they have been COMPLICIT in the ECONOMIC LOOTING of America, at the very least since Antonin Scalia and the US Supreme Court STOLE the 2000 presidential election away (NOT from the hapless, pathetic Al Gore, but) from tens of millions of Democratic-candidate voting voters.
As JUST ONE EXAMPLE of how America's "major media" "news" companies HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT in the FINANCIAL LOOTING of America, is the fact that NONE OF THEM have EVER SOUGHT TO _LINK_ President Bush and his corrupt White House with.... THE MASSIVE FINANCIAL FRAUD of ENRON corporation, Enron Chairman and CEO _only_ being BUSH's #1 CAREER CAMPAIGN DONOR through his entire political career!"
(Enron, for example, providing the Bush campaign FREE corporate air travel during the Florida (non-) Recount battle.)
As a SECOND example of how COMPLICITLY CORRUPT the US corporate "media" has been is that NONE OF THEM, have EVER _DEMANDED_ answers for the the NINE BILLION DOLLARS CASH that "went MISSING" in Iraq, within 2-3 weeks of that cash being handed to Bush's "VICEROY" in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.
(Nor have the stupid American media whores pointed out that "VICEROY" was the designation of the Spanish crown's demigod authorities DURING THE GENOCIDAL Spanish conquistador CONQUESTS of the New World - which DEPOPULATED and ENSLAVED ENTIRE REGIONS of Central- and South America, duh. GREAT, REVEALING job title for a Bush admin. flunky allegedly trying to bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraq... NOT!)
So now, the US corporate media, 8 year partners-in-crime to the Bush-GOP administration's desire to TURN AMERICA BACK into an IGNORANT, ENSLAVED plantation wage-slave population, finds readership down so severely, that those businesses are facing drastic financial losses.
SERVES THEM RIGHT.
=====================================================
Tribune Hires Advisers to Help Stave Off Bankruptcy
December 7, 2008
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/tribune-hires-bankruptcy-advisers/
Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company faces a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said.
The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired advisers including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of its longtime law firms, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers.
It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet. Several newspaper companies have struggled to cope with declining revenues and mounting debt woes. Tribune has pared back the newsrooms of many of its papers, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, and it sold off Newsday to Cablevision’s Dolan family earlier this year.
As JUST ONE EXAMPLE of how America's "major media" "news" companies HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT in the FINANCIAL LOOTING of America, is the fact that NONE OF THEM have EVER SOUGHT TO _LINK_ President Bush and his corrupt White House with.... THE MASSIVE FINANCIAL FRAUD of ENRON corporation, Enron Chairman and CEO _only_ being BUSH's #1 CAREER CAMPAIGN DONOR through his entire political career!"
(Enron, for example, providing the Bush campaign FREE corporate air travel during the Florida (non-) Recount battle.)
As a SECOND example of how COMPLICITLY CORRUPT the US corporate "media" has been is that NONE OF THEM, have EVER _DEMANDED_ answers for the the NINE BILLION DOLLARS CASH that "went MISSING" in Iraq, within 2-3 weeks of that cash being handed to Bush's "VICEROY" in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.
(Nor have the stupid American media whores pointed out that "VICEROY" was the designation of the Spanish crown's demigod authorities DURING THE GENOCIDAL Spanish conquistador CONQUESTS of the New World - which DEPOPULATED and ENSLAVED ENTIRE REGIONS of Central- and South America, duh. GREAT, REVEALING job title for a Bush admin. flunky allegedly trying to bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraq... NOT!)
So now, the US corporate media, 8 year partners-in-crime to the Bush-GOP administration's desire to TURN AMERICA BACK into an IGNORANT, ENSLAVED plantation wage-slave population, finds readership down so severely, that those businesses are facing drastic financial losses.
SERVES THEM RIGHT.
=====================================================
Tribune Hires Advisers to Help Stave Off Bankruptcy
December 7, 2008
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/tribune-hires-bankruptcy-advisers/
Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company faces a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said.
The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired advisers including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of its longtime law firms, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers.
It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet. Several newspaper companies have struggled to cope with declining revenues and mounting debt woes. Tribune has pared back the newsrooms of many of its papers, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, and it sold off Newsday to Cablevision’s Dolan family earlier this year.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
PM Carpenter Dissects the WASHINGTON WHORE POST's fawning, slavish treatment of Bush-Paulson WASTING BILLIONS of taxpayer "BAILOUT" dollars...
Just how sad, sordid, and vile the WASHINGTON COWARDLY POST has become as an institution is illustrated in today's editorial by PM Carpenter.
PM explaining that when Washington Post writers and editors write _any_ article on a Bush administration agenda or policy execution, you can just PARACHUTE IN THE WORDS "FAILURE," "INADEQUACY," "LACK OF OVERSIGHT" - and the god-damned Washington Post will PRETEND that there IS NOTHING seriously wrong about such a story reporting that the Bush administration is MISHANDLING YET ANOTHER trillion dollars (sigh) of taxpayer money!
- EVEN AS EIGHT YEARS of the Bush administrations relentless, continual support for _ENRON ACCOUNTING_ financial and corporate standards, making American DEPENDENT on FOREIGN OIL _and_ FOREIGN CREDIT, & DEFICIT ECONOMICS, are THE ROOT of this current FAMILY CRUSHING, JOB KILLING, ECONOMY GUTTING America- and world economic crisis!
(ONE MILLION LAYOFFS in America this year, alone!)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/BUDA14GTA9.DTL
Washington Post, THY NAME is VILE, nation-killing COMPLICITY in KLEPTOCRACY (what Paul Craig Roberts calls "ECONOMIC TREASON") - SERVILE COURTIERS to POWER, & SYCHOPHANTS to RAW GREED & ABJECT LIES.
PM explaining that when Washington Post writers and editors write _any_ article on a Bush administration agenda or policy execution, you can just PARACHUTE IN THE WORDS "FAILURE," "INADEQUACY," "LACK OF OVERSIGHT" - and the god-damned Washington Post will PRETEND that there IS NOTHING seriously wrong about such a story reporting that the Bush administration is MISHANDLING YET ANOTHER trillion dollars (sigh) of taxpayer money!
- EVEN AS EIGHT YEARS of the Bush administrations relentless, continual support for _ENRON ACCOUNTING_ financial and corporate standards, making American DEPENDENT on FOREIGN OIL _and_ FOREIGN CREDIT, & DEFICIT ECONOMICS, are THE ROOT of this current FAMILY CRUSHING, JOB KILLING, ECONOMY GUTTING America- and world economic crisis!
(ONE MILLION LAYOFFS in America this year, alone!)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/BUDA14GTA9.DTL
"As the Washington Post reports, WHILE REVEALING _NO_ SHOCK OR even DISMAY: 'The Bush administration has failed to adequately oversee its $700 billion bailout program'....
...Failure, inadequacy, lack of oversight -- three commonly referenced subjects in any story on the Bush regime, which parachute into the same inclusive sentence with almost perfunctory regularity and, after eight years, have devolved to the reportorial level of a yawning S.N.A.F.U."
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/252
Washington Post, THY NAME is VILE, nation-killing COMPLICITY in KLEPTOCRACY (what Paul Craig Roberts calls "ECONOMIC TREASON") - SERVILE COURTIERS to POWER, & SYCHOPHANTS to RAW GREED & ABJECT LIES.
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