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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 2:56 pm Post subject: Barack Obama: Crony Capitalist |
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Barack Obama's Att. Gen. Eric Holder won't prosecute Goldman Sachs
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Thursday�s announcement that there will be no prosecutions [against Goldman Sachs] should hardly come as a surprise. In 2008, Goldman Sachs employees were among Barack Obama�s top campaign contributors, giving a combined $1,013,091. Eric Holder�s former law firm, Covington & Burling, also counts Goldman Sachs as one of its clients. Furthermore, in April 2011, when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a scathing report detailing Goldman�s suspicious Abacus deal, several Goldman executives and their families began flooding Obama campaign coffers with donations, some giving the maximum $35,800.
Consider the following small-time operators as listed on the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force website:
� �Three Connecticut Women Charged with Overseeing �Gifting Tables� Pyramid Scheme.� Three women in their 50s and 60s were indicted for conspiracy, tax, and wire-fraud charges. �These arrests should send a strong message to all who threaten the financial health of our communities,� one federal agent declared.
� In March, 2012, the DOJ sent a property appraiser in Washington, D.C., to the slammer for 65 months for fraudulently inflated prices in a scheme to �flip� properties. The scheme was a small-time $1 million operation, a sharp contrast with the billions on Wall Street.
� The DOJ�s �get tough� on financial crime strategy included sending two health-care software company executives to the clink for 13 and 15 years.
� A Florida resident was charged and sentenced to 14 months in federal prison for falsifying documents, thereby resulting in the obstruction of an SEC investigation.
� Five people in California were charged with bid-rigging foreclosure auctions. The individuals have been charged with violating the Sherman Act and could face up to 10 years in jail.
� Federal officials went after 10 people in Las Vegas because they tried to �fraudulently gain control of condominium homeowners� associations in the Las Vegas area so that the HAOs would direct business to a certain law firm and construction company.�
� The owner of a Miami company got 46 months in prison for creating fake loan applications.
� Four people in Tacoma, Wash., were indicted for conspiracy that caused a small bank to fail. Their crime: making false statements on loan applications and to HUD.
To be sure, financial fraud of any kind is wrong and should be prosecuted. But locking up �pygmies� is hardly the kind of financial-fraud crackdown Americans expected in the wake of the largest financial crisis in U.S. history. Increasingly, there appear to be two sets of rules: one for the average citizen, and another for the connected cronies who rule the inside game. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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Obama wants you to believe that the auto bailouts had to be structured the way they were to save the Big Three. Just like with TARP, Obama structured the auto bailouts to favor campaign contributors. In this case, Obama received $27,340 from UAW and Democrats combined received $4,161,567.
The Auto Bailout was good for UAW and bad for capitalism
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The administration sold its interest in Chrysler in July 2011, racking up a loss of $1.3 billion. It still holds 26% of GM and is riding the stock price down. With GM shares trading at just over $20, the taxpayer's paper losses are at least $16 billion.
Those are just the obvious costs.
The government's tweaking of bankruptcy and tax rules freed GM from the usual limits on carrying pre-bankruptcy losses forward. Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative legal group Committee for Justice, estimates that this special tax break adds $18 billion to the cost of the GM deal.
Also, the bailouts would have cost much less if not for the favored treatment given to the United Auto Workers. According to analysis by the Heritage Foundation's James Sherk and George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicky, the UAW giveaways were worth about $26 billion. |
Even those who favored gov't bailouts to the Big Three automakers should be shocked at how much those bailouts were geared towards specifically serving the UAW. |
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Unposter
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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No doubt. Justice is/has become a sham.
The Democrats and the Republicans are all about using government to give their people what they can give them, though personally I think the current crop of Republicans are worse/more blatant about it but I think at one time the Democrats were worse.
It is OJ Simpson justice. Let's pick a side and favor it regardless of the reality of it.
I am not sure it hasn't always been that way.
But, I am for gradualism. I don't think big change is possible and often not desireable. (Think French Revolution). We need to move government slowly in the right direction. We need a government that at least pays SOME attention to the common people and not just the large, monied interests. And, we need to keep the pressure up and move it in that direction. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 5:17 am Post subject: |
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| In this case, Obama received $27,340 from UAW and Democrats combined received $4,161,567. |
How do you categorize the $10 MILLION Sheldon Adelson gave Newt? |
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Kimbop
Joined: 31 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 7:53 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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| In this case, Obama received $27,340 from UAW and Democrats combined received $4,161,567. |
How do you categorize the $10 MILLION Sheldon Adelson gave Newt? |
The Democrats' UAW campaign donation money was arrogated/usurped from poor laborers via brute force and threat of punishment. Sheldon Adelson was given his money voluntarily.
Whether to allow unlimited corporate donations to election campaigns is a different discussion. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 8:44 am Post subject: |
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poor laborers via brute force and threat of punishment. Sheldon Adelson was given his money voluntarily.
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Any proof of that or is it just an empty assertion?
Is total subservience your default position on all things? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 8:48 am Post subject: |
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| Obama wants you to believe that the auto bailouts had to be structured the way they were to save the Big Three. |
You seem to be agreeing that the bailouts had to be structured in some way that would benefit someone. Would you rather they had been structured to benefit the owners more? Is that your argument? |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 10:43 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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| Obama wants you to believe that the auto bailouts had to be structured the way they were to save the Big Three. |
You seem to be agreeing that the bailouts had to be structured in some way that would benefit someone. Would you rather they had been structured to benefit the owners more? Is that your argument? |
Strawman. |
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geldedgoat
Joined: 05 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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This doesn't necessarily relate to Obama's cronyism, but this thread seemed as good a place as any:
Due process under duress: Detaining citizens under NDAA
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The US government seems determined to have the power to do away with due process and Americans' right to a trial.
I am one of the lead plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the president the power to hold any US citizen anywhere for as long as he wants, without charge or trial. In May, following a March hearing, Judge Katherine Forrest issued an injunction against it; this week, in a final hearing in New York City, US government lawyers essentially asserted even more extreme powers - the power to entirely disregard the judge and the law. Indeed, on Monday, August 6, Obama's lawyers filed an appeal to the injunction - a profoundly important development that as of this writing has been scarcely reported.
In the March hearing, the US lawyers had confirmed that yes, the NDAA does give the president the power to lock up people like journalist Chris Hedges and peaceful activists like myself and other plaintiffs. Government attorneys have stated on record that even war correspondents could be locked up indefinitely under the NDAA. Judge Katherine Forrest had ruled for a temporary injunction against an unconstitutional provision in this law - after government attorneys refused to provide assurances to the court that plaintiffs and others would not be indefinitely detained for engaging in first amendment activities. Twice the government has refused to define what it means to be an "associated force", and it claimed the right to refrain from offering any clear definition of this term, or clear boundaries of power under this law. This past week's hearing was even more terrifying: incredibly, in this hearing, Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA's provision - one that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial - has not been applied by the US government anywhere in the world - after Judge Forrest's injunction. In other words, they were saying to a US judge that they could not or would not state whether Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had lain down before them. |
More at link. |
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atwood
Joined: 26 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Obama wants you to believe that the auto bailouts had to be structured the way they were to save the Big Three. Just like with TARP, Obama structured the auto bailouts to favor campaign contributors. In this case, Obama received $27,340 from UAW and Democrats combined received $4,161,567.
The Auto Bailout was good for UAW and bad for capitalism
| Quote: |
The administration sold its interest in Chrysler in July 2011, racking up a loss of $1.3 billion. It still holds 26% of GM and is riding the stock price down. With GM shares trading at just over $20, the taxpayer's paper losses are at least $16 billion.
Those are just the obvious costs.
The government's tweaking of bankruptcy and tax rules freed GM from the usual limits on carrying pre-bankruptcy losses forward. Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative legal group Committee for Justice, estimates that this special tax break adds $18 billion to the cost of the GM deal.
Also, the bailouts would have cost much less if not for the favored treatment given to the United Auto Workers. According to analysis by the Heritage Foundation's James Sherk and George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicky, the UAW giveaways were worth about $26 billion. |
Even those who favored gov't bailouts to the Big Three automakers should be shocked at how much those bailouts were geared towards specifically serving the UAW. |
It sure is a crying shame that the people who do the work and build the cars should profit in any way, shape or form for their labors.
"What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class." |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| atwood wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
Obama wants you to believe that the auto bailouts had to be structured the way they were to save the Big Three. Just like with TARP, Obama structured the auto bailouts to favor campaign contributors. In this case, Obama received $27,340 from UAW and Democrats combined received $4,161,567.
The Auto Bailout was good for UAW and bad for capitalism
| Quote: |
The administration sold its interest in Chrysler in July 2011, racking up a loss of $1.3 billion. It still holds 26% of GM and is riding the stock price down. With GM shares trading at just over $20, the taxpayer's paper losses are at least $16 billion.
Those are just the obvious costs.
The government's tweaking of bankruptcy and tax rules freed GM from the usual limits on carrying pre-bankruptcy losses forward. Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative legal group Committee for Justice, estimates that this special tax break adds $18 billion to the cost of the GM deal.
Also, the bailouts would have cost much less if not for the favored treatment given to the United Auto Workers. According to analysis by the Heritage Foundation's James Sherk and George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicky, the UAW giveaways were worth about $26 billion. |
Even those who favored gov't bailouts to the Big Three automakers should be shocked at how much those bailouts were geared towards specifically serving the UAW. |
It sure is a crying shame that the people who do the work and build the cars should profit in any way, shape or form for their labors.
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In the case of major parts supplier and GM spin-off company Delphi, the profit went straight to a major private equity firm.
http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza#
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/10/18/romney-profited-from-auto-bailout/
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By the end of June 2009, with the bailout negotiations in full swing, the hedge funds, under Singer�s lead, used their bonds to buy up a controlling interest in Delphi�s stock. According to SEC filings, they paid, on average, an equivalent of only 67 cents per share.
Just two years later, in November 2011, the Singer syndicate took Delphi public at $22 a share, turning an eye-popping profit of more than 3,000 percent. Singer�s fund investors scored a gain of $904 million, all courtesy of the US taxpayer. But that�s not all. In the year since Delphi began trading publicly, its stock has soared 45 percent. Loeb�s gains so far for Third Point: $390 million. The gains for Silver Point, headed by two Goldman Sachs alums: $894 million. John Paulson�s fund, which has already sold half its holdings, has a $2.6 billion gain. And Singer�s funds and partners, combining what they�ve sold and what they hold, have $1.29 billion in profits, about forty-four times their original investment.
Yet without taking billions in taxpayer bailout funds�and slashing worker pensions�the hedge funds� investment in Delphi would not have been worth a single dollar, according to calculations by GM and the US Treasury. |
But they saved U.S. union jobs, right? Wrong.
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Once the hedge funders, including Singer . . . took control of the firm, they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers.
Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney�s �job creators� did create jobs�in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad). |
And the unionized workers's pensions?
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| Making good on the full pensions for salaried workers would cost Delphi a one-time charge of less than $1 billion. This year, Delphi was flush with $1.4 billion in cash�
meaning its owners could have made the pensioners whole
and still cleared a profit. Instead, in May, Delphi chose to use most of those funds to take over auto parts plants in Asia at
a cost of $972 million�purchased from Bain Capital. |
That's right, Bain Capital. Indeed, Romney was an investor in Singer's private equity group.
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Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout�and a few of Romney�s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys�, were astronomical�more than 3,000 percent on their investment.
. . .
Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors� profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi�s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government�s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi�s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds� paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers. |
Crony Capitalism, everyone. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 11:12 am Post subject: BoA provides below-inflation-interest loan to Obama campaign |
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Obama Campaign Borrows $15M from Bank of America
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| Obama For America took out a $15 million loan from Bank of America last month, according to the campaign�s October monthly FEC report. The loan was incurred on September 4 and is due November 14, eight days after the election. OFA received an interest rate of 2.5% plus the current Libor rate. |
Banks are accustomed to providing Congressmen with sweetheart deals on their residences. Countrywide, now merged into Bank of America, regularly provided such sweetheart deals to VIP lawmakers in addition to normal campaign contributions.
House Oversight Report (.pdf)
Nevertheless, Bank of America's loan to Obama for America outdoes all this in sheer size. $15 million. I'm sure BoA's return on its investment, should Obama win, will be substantial. |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not denying he is and this is to the Romney supporters out there. How is Romney any better? If anything he and the Republicans are worse. Any Republican who uses this argument against Obama is essentially saying 'see, he's just like us'.
A competitive 3rd party is sorely needed. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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| sirius black wrote: |
| I'm not denying he is and this is to the Romney supporters out there. How is Romney any better? If anything he and the Republicans are worse. Any Republican who uses this argument against Obama is essentially saying 'see, he's just like us'. |
I'm telling you the apples are rotten, and you are here telling me how bad the oranges are. The topic is the apples. I encourage you to go make a thread about how bad Mitt Romney and the Republicans are. I may even contribute positively to it.
Here's the thing: Barack Obama is the President. He's the incumbent. He has a record to run on. But his record appears to be cronyism and corruption behind every turn, rotten dealings and government capture within each of his major policies.
Here's something I'd like answered: is this crony capitalism new or the same ol' same ol'? Was this stuff common in the 90s, or was it not, or is it just more pronounced now? Were the apples and oranges always so disfigured and worm-eaten?
Jill Stein, the Green Party Presidential candidate, had a great perspective on this:
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| [T]he [Wall Street] prosecutions are not happening. Even Ronald Reagan prosecuted over a thousand [clears throat] corporate executives responsible for the S&L crash. That was tiny compared to the crash that we have now. I think its pretty clear why they�re not being prosecuted because they�re all over the Whitehouse and because Barack Obama and the Whitehouse are in bed with Wall Street. |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| The apple is rotten. Okay, so what do you about it (election wise that is)? |
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