UncleNasty
Posts: 1108
Joined: 3/20/2004 Status: offline
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There were a couple of major casues of the "crash" but I think ultimately it comes down to this: The big players on wall street went after there own in the case of both Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. Tactics employed had frequently been used in the past 40 years to go after smaller players, and these tactics had become more available in the past 40 years - with additional relaxing of regulations, with less regulation enforcement, etc. A look at the short selling, naked short selling, failed trades and the rumors that surrounding the failure of both of those Banks looks as if it was simply a case of the others ganging up on them. Bloomberg, through an FOIA request, turned up records of a meeting between ALL of the big banks and the Fed, with the one exception being Bear Sterns, a week or ten days before Bear went under. Inclusion of that document was accidental I'm sure. None of the CEO's, nor Paulson, nor Bernanke, nor Geithner (who at the time was head of the NY Fed) have been willing to comment on the meeting. I forget the fellows name, but I think it was the CEO of Overstock.com, has been trying to make noises about market manipulations in exactly this way for several years now. I guess I'm trying to connect some dots of information I've come across in the past 22 months while researching the mortgage and housing crisis. Derivatives, bailouts, etc., have not the primary focus of my research so I'm a little out of my depth. One thing is clear to me though: Goldman Sachs is at the top of the heap in banking now. And Obama has made many appointments of former Goldman folks. A look at who got money from the TARP fund while Paulson (former Treasury Sec. and Goldman guy) and Geithner (former Goldman guy and in charge of TARP, now Treasury Sec.) is a pretty strong argument. Uncle Nasty
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