The Biggest Rip-off of All Time

Money and Markets
by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. 11-23-09

In the scenario I’m about to paint for you, the dialog is fictional, but all the facts and figures are real.

The time: 1 AM, November 23, 2011, exactly two years from now.

The place: the White House, suddenly and unexpectedly under siege as a new financial crisis erupts.

The economic booms of 2010 have morphed into superbooms … the superbooms into bubbles … and the bubbles into busts.

Large banks are again on the brink. Financial markets are again in turmoil.

Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — the outstanding survivors of an off-again-on-again debt crisis — are now its primary victims.....



Profound Impacts

My fictional scenario ends here. But the impacts of those fateful decisions of late 2008 and early 2009 do not.

The AIG rescue was the biggest taxpayer rip-off of all time. Worse, it was the master seed that sprouted a whole series of similar taxpayer rip-offs on Wall Street.

The money flow is clear:

From taxpayers to AIG …

From AIG and the Fed to big Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs, and then …

From Goldman Sachs to its employees in the form of lavish bonuses.

It is, by far, the greatest taxpayer rip-off off all time! FULL STORY