The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked

The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
By Greg Palast
Reporting for Air America Radio’s Clout

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.
Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.

To read the entire article go to http://www.fortruth.org

Was Eliot Spitzer a victim as well as an idiot?

We can all agree that men using prostitutes when they are ‘happily married’ are stupid and careless of the love and trust they have been given.

However, is Mr Spitzer’s case more than just the tale of another politican caught with his pants down?

In 2004, Eliot Spitzer was the Sheriff of Wall Street, the New York prosecutor who had set his sights on the cosy banking and corporate worlds that made millions on illegal banking practices and insider deals.

Many outside Wall Street applauded Spitzer for tackling murky insider trading, however his willingness to delve into the private lives of those he investigated magnified hostility towards him.

Two banks in particular, North Fork and HSBC were on the receiving end of Spitzer investigations in his days as attorney-general. In 2003 North Fork was obliged to repay tens of thousands to customers because of alleged illegal bank charges applied to their accounts.

Now, reports are circulating in New York that Eliot Spitzer may have owed his fall, at least in part, to the bankers he ruthlessly pursued with a moral zeal. Especially since the same two banks North Fork and HSBC were instrumental in reporting the bank transactions that kickstarted the investigation into Spitzer’s accounts.

No evidence has been found that the bank reporting was malicious! Yet a system designed to ferret out drug dealers, the mafia, terrorists and major financial fraud focussed on transactions of $15,000 in an account whose owner is a $millionaire.

I am not endorsing Mr Spitzer’s recreational activities, however I wonder if he would have been able to carry on indulging in them with complete privacy if he had left the banks alone?