Thuggery and Thievery

A friend emailed me a link to an article in Rolling Stone Magazine titled The Great American Bubble Machine. Surprisingly, it exposes a tiny bit of the massive amount of corruption going on in the Obama administration. And as one can see from the cover at left from their March '08 issue, Rolling Stone has been a big fan of Obama from the beginning. Of course one has to read to nearly the end of the lengthy article to find the incriminating parts. And most of the article focuses on the corruption in the Bush administration.

But the real intent of the article is to shine a light on how Goldman Sachs "has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression." Author Matt Taibbi writes of the three most recent "bubbles" in the marketplace, and how they have been engineered primarily by financial behemoth, Goldman Sachs. He identifies these "bubbles" as the Internet or Dot Com bubble, the Housing and Credit bubble, and the most recent Oil Commodities bubble in which we saw gasoline prices reach $4.00 or more per gallon.

In each of the three "bubbles" identified above, prices rose exponentially to unrealistic and unsustainable levels, and then crashed. Taibbi explains how Goldman was a major player in engineering these bubbles and how Goldman players reaped enormous profits at the peak of each one. Taibbi claims that during the Oil Commodities bubble, while demand for oil was low and the supply was high (prices should be going down, right?), a typical barrel of oil traded 27 times. At each trade, the price went up and dollars were skimmed off the top.

But the worst of this story is the incestuous relationship between large financial groups like Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury. Henry Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary and the architect of the first TARP bailout had previously been the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Taibbi names names, and lots of them. He identifies players from the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, all engaged in sleight of hand with billions of dollars.

After the last bubble burst, the Oil Commodities bubble that is, the money men had little left to pillage. So under the guise of a "pending economic disaster," wheels were set in motion to plunder the American taxpayer.

I recommend you read the entire article (it's somewhat lengthy) and then continue to explore on your own this systematic, orchestrated, thuggery and thievery that continues right under our noses.

You might also check out Aaron Russo's film, America: Freedom to Fascism. I purchased the DVD and it is indeed an eye opener.

Friends, our country and its wealth are beginning to be stripped right out of our hands.

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