Michael Greenberger, May 4 2010, Teabaggers & Teaboxes; Ants Spiders Bees; Joseph interpreting Dreams

Michael Greenberger, May 4 2010, Teabaggers & Teaboxes; Ants Spiders Bees; Joseph interpreting Dreams
in re Jerry Z Muller, Capitalism and the Jews; Niall Ferguson, Rothschilds;

In the 8:45 am slot, Greenberger explained how derivative/insurance worked in the finance meltdown: firms like Goldman in effect bought insurance on someone else's house, in the hope/bet that the house would burn down and that Goldman would collect the insurance proceeds on an asset they did not own.

The insurance policy in turn was securitized and sold.

caller: 8:56 Booksley Born was driven out of government, in 1997 and 1999 Greenberger and Born worked together and tried to create regulation for the kind of instruments that brought down Greece.
Robert Rubin & Larry Summers and Greenspan were not sympathetic to Born and Greenberger & Born's viewpoint.
Sheila Baer at 8:58 Greenberger mentions the people in decision making roles who are inching toward
PBS Frontline, "The Warning." early 1998 Born & Greenberger saw the lack of transparency, the fact that no capital to back up the bets.


Economics of Destruction an anonymously written article in WSJ.

Larry Summers called Brooksley Born in 1998 re

see book, 13 Bankers

Rubin, Summers, Greenspan, Levitt one by one took Born to task and asked Born not to pursue her agenda. She

see 9:03 am

contrast Greenberger's comments with yesterday's Wolfowitz appearance on C Span.

caller: Rutland VT:
Greenberger: problem with the ratings agencies: situation is the student pays the student for the grades.
Lawrence from Stern School, NYU, forget about the agencies; burden to explain to the investing public why investments are sound, not just a grade....


"the casinos didn't have the capital to pay off their debt, the banks blew a giant hole in the market, taxpayers ended up bailing out the gamblers."

The casino atmosphere does not capitalize

go back to old fashioned american ingenuity that makes things, not slips of paper that represent bets...

THIS IS THE ESSENCE OF JEWISH CAPITALISM: BETTING ON EMPTY BOXES.

caller: "ALL of the bankers were doing it, not... 9:10

Greenberger: most people are made to think the problem is the mortgagees who can't pay their loan but that's not the greatest problem, it's the BETTING on the loans that caused the problem.

...credit card scores another gaming system....
the gambling that characterizes subprime can also affect commercial loans, etc
keep your eye on what is going on in Southern Europe; it's rippling: it started w Greece buying a package from Goldman in order to get into WTO. keep your eye on the euro.... (at 9:13 - 9:14)

caller: the people making money on these scams knew exactly what was going on; it's not that complicated. EXACTLY: it is deliberately complexified, a shell game with moves to confuse the sucker.

Greenberger: taxpayers paid AIG 100% so that AIG could pay off its bets.

Credit rating agencies will not go away. "There is a market for people who can provide intelligent, sophisticated common sense assessment of investments."