Sunday, March 22, 2009

WPost Elitists Feel for Wall St. Brethren

By Robert Parry
March 22, 2009

One interesting trait of elitists is that they show remarkable class solidarity, often more so than people of lesser means. Which may help explain why the Washington Post’s editorial writers penned three editorials last week decrying the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses.

Read on.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have to wonder whether this phenomenon is due to the fact that the elites really are all cut from the same cookie-cutter or replicas of the same.

The fact is that there really are not too many of these elites. Just turn on the TV on Sunday morning. No matter the subject, it's the same talking heads that are the experts on the topic of the day.

On the other end of the scale, we all know common-folk who have their heads on straight and we all know others who have their heads somewhere else. Being a common-folk is no reason for confidence in someone. For that matter, neither is being an elite.

Sun Mar 22, 05:25:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

This is consistent with the past behavior of the Washington Post and their friends in MSM. Here they say it's justified to be angry, but we must keep paying the bonuses to keep these "talented people" so they can clean up the mess. Otherwise more terrible things would happen. Sounds familiar? Regarding Iraq, they said even though we had started the war based on misinformation about WMDs (oops!), we must stay the course and keep the commander-in-chief for continuity, or this country would fall apart and the world would end. Variation on the same theme, isn't it?

Sun Mar 22, 07:09:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

It is true that selling the $1.6 trillion in credit default swap derivative contracts that AIG knew the company could never pay gives rise only to securities fraud claims against AIG by the counter-parties to those derivative contracts.

However, when AIG threatened the Bush Administration that AIG's bankruptcy would trigger a worldwide economic meltdown in its successful effort to extort the first $80 billion in bailout money from the U.S. Treasury to pay-off AIG's derivative contract obligations in September 2008, the fraud and extortion was against the federal government.

Any citizen, group of citizens or all citizens as a class have legal claims against AIG for fraud against the federal government and, because the federal government is an 79% shareholder in AIG, there are also breach of fiduciary duty claims against AIG's directors.

These claims can be brought under the United States False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. § 3729–3733). However, qui tam suits as these are called, can not be filed pro se, i.e. without the representation of a lawyer. (See United States ex Rel. Lu v. Ou, 368 F.3d 773 (7th Cir. 2004). And, it may be as difficult to find honest and competent lawyers who do not have conflicts of interest with AIG -- as difficult as it is to find a member of the U.S. Congress that has not been an AIG "Bonus Plan" of their own. (See http://TexasBarWatch.US for an idea of how difficult it can be to find lawyers who do not have conflicts of interest with AIG.)

To collect the approximately $200 billion that the U.S. Treasury has scheduled thus far to hand over to AIG, the counter-parties AIG paid the U.S. Treasury money it obtained through extortion and fraud will be named as parties to the suit that have been unjustly enriched through AIG's fraud. The federal court handling the case will be asked to, in equity, impose a constructive trust upon the U.S. Treasury money that AIG paid them.

Citizens have to stop whining to each other about how bad AIG is and take action to get the money back from these crooks. The False Claims Act was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War to empower citizens to police the massive wave frauds against the government that were being carried out under the cover of a national crisis, as they are being carried out today.

America, let's roll!

Sun Mar 22, 10:10:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

"The Post said the American people must face up to the fact that Main Street can’t function without Wall Street:..."

Really? Well, I don't even remember when was the last time ANYBODY told me what I MUST do! EGAD! What world do those people LIVE IN, anyway?

Certainly, Main Street will be fine. It has, to some decent extent, recovered from Interstates and the Big Box stores, has it not? What can Wall Street do to a bunch of little antique stores, punctuated by greasy old empty windows, anyway? Stupid people!

The Washington Post doesn't even know what Main Street IS! And it sure doesn't know ME!

I was never a greatly rebellious person, but now, at age 67, I am ready to don a three-cornered hat and hit the streets. I MUCH prefer peaceful protest, but I do have a hoe and I once hit a running rat smack dab in the head with a Hi-Standard .22 pistol--in the dark with only a single headlight on a tripod for light(back in the days). I may seem to be past my prime to many, but I am stubborn and don't have much to lose. Should we do a one-day strike, all I could do is refuse to shop, but I would sure be out there with the displaced professionals and laid off worker bees! Don't forget, People. We are over 300,000,000. They are few. We have to buy things, and they do need us. We can get them where it hurts. And NO, Main Street will not suffer. We could, very simply, ALL refuse to go to Walmart for 24 hours, and the message would be clear. It can happen, here in the day of the WWW. Until they take it away from us, which is very much in the mill, I assure you.

-currently pissed-off Granny

Mon Mar 23, 05:37:00 PM 2009

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