I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson said, "I sincerely believe... that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

Jefferson for President? ;)

Groet / Cees

PS. Het 'feit' dat GS de grootste donaties gaf aan Obama is de
commentaren op een eerder bericht vandaag 'recht gezet.' Bush kreeg het
meest.

April 19, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
Looters in Loafers
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/opinion/19krugman.html
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last October, I saw a cartoon by Mike Peters in which a teacher asks a
student to create a sentence that uses the verb “sacks,” as in looting
and pillaging. The student replies, “Goldman Sachs.”

Sure enough, last week the Securities and Exchange Commission accused
the Gucci-loafer guys at Goldman of engaging in what amounts to
white-collar looting.

I’m using the term looting in the sense defined by the economists George
Akerlof and Paul Romer in a 1993 paper titled “Looting: The Economic
Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.” That paper, written in the
aftermath of the savings-and-loan crisis of the Reagan years, argued
that many of the losses in that crisis were the result of deliberate fraud.

Was the same true of the current financial crisis?

Most discussion of the role of fraud in the crisis has focused on two
forms of deception: predatory lending and misrepresentation of risks.
Clearly, some borrowers were lured into taking out complex, expensive
loans they didn’t understand — a process facilitated by Bush-era federal
regulators, who both failed to curb abusive lending and prevented states
from taking action on their own. And for the most part, subprime lenders
didn’t hold on to the loans they made. Instead, they sold off the loans
to investors, in some cases surely knowing that the potential for future
losses was greater than the people buying those loans (or securities
backed by the loans) realized.

What we’re now seeing are accusations of a third form of fraud.

We’ve known for some time that Goldman Sachs and other firms marketed
mortgage-backed securities even as they sought to make profits by
betting that such securities would plunge in value. This practice,
however, while arguably reprehensible, wasn’t illegal. But now the
S.E.C. is charging that Goldman created and marketed securities that
were deliberately designed to fail, so that an important client could
make money off that failure. That’s what I would call looting.

And Goldman isn’t the only financial firm accused of doing this.
According to the Pulitzer-winning investigative journalism Web site
ProPublica, several banks helped market designed-to-fail investments on
behalf of the hedge fund Magnetar, which was betting on that failure.

So what role did fraud play in the financial crisis? Neither predatory
lending nor the selling of mortgages on false pretenses caused the
crisis. But they surely made it worse, both by helping to inflate the
housing bubble and by creating a pool of assets guaranteed to turn into
toxic waste once the bubble burst.

As for the alleged creation of investments designed to fail, these may
have magnified losses at the banks that were on the losing side of these
deals, deepening the banking crisis that turned the burst housing bubble
into an economy-wide catastrophe.

The obvious question is whether financial reform of the kind now being
contemplated would have prevented some or all of the fraud that now
seems to have flourished over the past decade. And the answer is yes.

For one thing, an independent consumer protection bureau could have
helped limit predatory lending. Another provision in the proposed Senate
bill, requiring that lenders retain 5 percent of the value of loans they
make, would have limited the practice of making bad loans and quickly
selling them off to unwary investors.

It’s less clear whether proposals for derivatives reform — which mainly
involve requiring that financial instruments like credit default swaps
be traded openly and transparently, like ordinary stocks and bonds —
would have prevented the alleged abuses by Goldman (although they
probably would have prevented the insurer A.I.G. from running wild and
requiring a federal bailout). What we can say is that the final draft of
financial reform had better include language that would prevent this
kind of looting — in particular, it should block the creation of
“synthetic C.D.O.’s,” cocktails of credit default swaps that let
investors take big bets on assets without actually owning them.

The main moral you should draw from the charges against Goldman, though,
doesn’t involve the fine print of reform; it involves the urgent need to
change Wall Street. Listening to financial-industry lobbyists and the
Republican politicians who have been huddling with them, you’d think
that everything will be fine as long as the federal government promises
not to do any more bailouts. But that’s totally wrong — and not just
because no such promise would be credible.

For the fact is that much of the financial industry has become a racket
— a game in which a handful of people are lavishly paid to mislead and
exploit consumers and investors. And if we don’t lower the boom on these
practices, the racket will just go on.



Dim
Texas
April 19th, 2010
8:52 am
Here is my theory about what's happening. The difference of our Great
Recession from Great Depression is that we now have a large proportion
of the population constantly pumping money into financial markets
through retirement contributions. That's why the market didn't
completely collapse and then went back to "normal" pretty quickly,
simply because the funds managing our retirements have nowhere else to
go, and honestly the system is set up so that we all have really nowhere
else to go. And firms like Goldman Sachs simply rig the system and skim
the cream from this constant inflow of money. They are parasites that
serve absolutely no purpose in our society. How can any company keep
paying out all their profits in bonuses year after year? The only answer
is that they are not really making any product, "financial product"
should be the definition of oxymoron. All they do is looting and then
splitting the loot at the end of the year. Most people are decent by
nature but they have a strong sense of fairness. And most people earn
modest living through hard work, while Wall Street keeps having a party
at our expense. That's why this wave of anger is not about to die down,
and whoever is riding it this November will win.
  Recommend  Recommended by 596 Readers
24.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Eric
Wisconsin
April 19th, 2010
9:29 am
If I remember correctly, the Reagan justice department sent roughly 3000
bankers to prison in the S&L crisis. I would like to think that record
can and should be broken. Somewhere between 5 to 10 thousand convictions
would suit me. Building prisons to house these people would be the only
reason I would approve of a tax hike to pay for it. Maybe they would get
the message. Some fraud statute should apply. Please Eric Holder, do the
right thing and put as many of these people away for a long time. And
please don't check how much they donated to Obama and the DNC before you
do it.
  Recommend  Recommended by 578 Readers
6.
Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
April 19th, 2010
8:51 am
In 1816, Thomas Jefferson said, "I sincerely believe... that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." In my own
experience, Wall Street has been the Avenue of Crooks since the 1980s
when they began marketing limited partnerships in which the general
partners often made out like the bandits they were, while the limited
partners lost their investments. Obviously, the Downtown Boys composed
many more Variations on a Shady Deal since the inception of the Reagan
Financial Instruments Slam.

Nonetheless, the general public shouldn't have to care if a bunch of
high-rollers lose their shirts on Wall Street any more than we care if
they lose in Vegas. Instead, the primary purpose of reform legislation
should be to indemnify Main Street against Wall Street.

Such legislation should ensure that the taxpayer does not have to bail
out billionaires. It should ensure that pension funds, which are high
rollers but which in fact represent you & me, are protected from the
sharks. It should ensure that home loans go to people who, given their
circumstances at the time of the loans, can reasonably be expected to
repay the loans & actually come out homeowners in the end. It should
ensure that banking & credit practices for individuals are fair &
reasonable.

This is all common-sense stuff. If indeed, as Jefferson believed, the
banks "are more dangerous than standing armies," we citizens expect the
President & the Congress to fulfill their obligation to protect us
against the enemy. For them to do less -- say, along the lines of the
Mitch McConnell Roll-Over-&-Collect-Campaign-Contributions Plan -- is an
abrogation of their Constitutional duty.

The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com

  Recommend  Recommended by 505 Readers
30.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
MEH
Ashland, OR
April 19th, 2010
9:53 am
I could just feel the change at our two local banks, WAMU and Wells
Fargo. Every few months, there were more desks brought in with more loan
officers. You had to make an appointment to see a bank officer; they
were all busy with loans. More and more signs for HELOCs; more junk mail
from banks. Once I went in with a question on a savings account and the
person behind the desk tried to upsell me a refinanced mortgage. It was
not just criminals in loafers; it was the entire industry with its
emphasis on quarterly profits and, obviously now, the bonuses and stock
options that flowed to upper management.

I think that financial reform of the industry should include a clawback
provision so that if we taxpayers ever get stuck again bailing out
banks, brokerages, and investment houses, the corporate officers and
boards of directors who have been in charge are made liable for
restitution of all benefits and bonuses for the last five years. Such a
proviso would help ensure that the financial health of the corporation
or institution is an ongoing potential financial liability for those in
charge. They can no longer walk away from a bankruptcy or with a golden
parachute from a disaster that they helped cause. There will be a major
personal cost for their failure to perform. They will have to help make
us whole.
  Recommend  Recommended by 357 Readers
26.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Steve
Cottage Grove, OR
April 19th, 2010
9:49 am
We need to regain society's traditional revulsion against gambling,
usury, and taking advantage of the innocent -- these are the practices
that our worst financial institutions have employed to steal from honest
people. There is no "making money" -- there is only either earning it or
taking it.
  Recommend  Recommended by 338 Readers
1.
L. Smith
Ohio
April 19th, 2010
8:50 am
Paul; Goldman Sachs was President Obama's biggest finacial supporter
during his campaign for President. Goldman Sachs still is one of the
largest contributors to President Obama and the Democratic Party in
general. Why do you not mention this? The Obama adminstration is
over-run with Goldman Sachs alums; and President Obama has had Lloyd
Blankfein and other Goldman Sachs people as his personal overnight
guests at the White House.

This is important. When the White House and the majority Party in power
is in bed with the lords of high finance; there will always be
corruption and cover-up of the corruption. Goldman Sachs and other Wall
Street banks were none of the top ten contributors to the Obama
campaign. Anyone can go to opensecrets.org and see for themselves.

We need an honest media that will report the facts to the public so the
voters will know who is really controlling politics in America, today.
  Recommend  Recommended by 272 Readers
5.
David Green
SF
April 19th, 2010
8:51 am
I am a reader of many smaller media sites like Mother Jones and Salon.
On one of these sites I read that while President Clinton was known for
having a lot of Hollywood tyoes to sleep overnight in the Lincoln
Bedroon; President Obama's very first overnight guest at the White House
was not a movie star or a sports celebrity, instead, it was Lloyd
Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. That sums up this situation in a nutshell. I
doubt any of the masters of the universe over at Goldman are worrying at
all, right now.
  Recommend  Recommended by 267 Readers
32.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Billl Watson
Menlo Park, California
April 19th, 2010
9:54 am
Without removing the crooks from government and Wall Street our country
can not survive.

Eliot Spitzer, or an equally tough prosecutor, if one exists, who really
wants to catch crooks, and a squad of Untouchables with an unrestricted
budget are what is needed now our country is on its knees as the result
of some very bad behavior within government and on Wall Street.

It is time for action to put an end to financial and government
corruption by putting a lot of very big people in prison for their
treacherous and destructive deeds.
  Recommend  Recommended by 263 Readers
79.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Boo
East Lansing Michigan
April 19th, 2010
10:26 am
I am a former Countrywide mortgage holder. With every single mortgage
payment notice, I got a notice encouraging me to take out a home loan to
"trade" on the value of my home. These solicitations told me I could
consolidate all my debts AND get money, lots of money, to spend all
based on the value of my home. There were also individual solicitations
that came independent of the mortgage payment notices. After writing "do
not solicit" letters that went no where, I had to make at least 3 phone
calls to the "customer service" department to get off this solicitation
list. No wonder Countrywide and others got in trouble. They went out of
their way to get people to get in over their heads. These thieves are
guilty of criminal activity and should be prosecuted to the full extent
to the law.
  Recommend  Recommended by 253 Readers
23.
David
SF
April 19th, 2010
9:28 am
Think for a moment. What kind of people would design securities designed
to self-destruct, sell them to pension funds, cities, states, and
countries, which are responsible for the food and shelter of millions of
honest hard-working citizens, and then bet against the same toxic
securities, bringing the entire financial system down, and then forcing
the same hapless victims to yet again bail these bankers out?

The answer: Only criminals with an extreme sociopathic and criminal
bent, with absolutely no ability to empathize.

It is gratifying that Dr. Krugman has started to criticize the likes of
Blankfeins and Pandits, but he still stops at the tame accusation of
“looting”. Surely, the Nobel Laureate must know that only decades of
widespread and persistent criminal behavior could have brought the
gigantic US financial system, along with that of the rest of the world,
to the brink of collapse. The current Goldman Sachs fraud case is only
the tip of the iceberg.

What is truly reprehensible is that these criminals are free and
continue to predate on the same victims and to enjoy their “loot”. Even
more reprehensible is that that Eric Holder and other state attorneys
general have not indicted these psychopathic criminals under RICO!!!!!
  Recommend  Recommended by 218 Readers
2.
sandra johnson
miami
April 19th, 2010
8:50 am
Back in 2008, before the Presidential election, and when candidate Obama
was coming on strong, your colleague, David Brooks wrote a column about
this issue. Brooks commented on how Goldman Sachs had attained such
influence with the Clinton administration; then, with the Bush
administration. And, then, Mr. Brooks commented to the effect that
candidate Obama was surrounded by so many Goldman Sachs people, that if
candidate Obama became President Obama, that Goldman Sachs very well
might own the White House. I don't know how to find that column, but it
should be in your archives. Mr. Brooks , in my opinion, was absolutely
right.
  Recommend  Recommended by 197 Readers
8.
pvolkov
Burlington, Ontario
April 19th, 2010
8:51 am
I am afraid that until and unless President Obama divests himself of the
advisors and lawmakers currently not making the necessary political and
financial decisions, he is helping to destroy the Democratic party and
his own political future.

And unfortunately, I see no signs of any real change occurring on his
watch. It's like watching a ship sinking in slow motion before our eyes.

Thank you for your valiant attempts to bring fiscal sanity to the fore.
  Recommend  Recommended by 186 Readers
31.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Edward
Reno, NV
April 19th, 2010
9:53 am
The previous tenants of the office I work in were subprime mortgage
lenders who duped people to take out mortgages they couldn't afford. The
current tenants? A mental health clinic. Now, we get to counsel those
whose lives were stressed by this debacle. No one should stand in the
way of re-regulating our financial system, including the derivative market.
  Recommend  Recommended by 168 Readers
15.
Janice Brown
Gulf Coast
April 19th, 2010
8:52 am
To regular working people, Goldman Sachs is probably the most despised
company in the nation. But, with our people in power, from President
Obama to Congress, Goldman Sachs is still the most influential
corporation in the nation. This story says as much about the corruption
of our elected politicans as it does about the arrogance of the bankers.
  Recommend  Recommended by 164 Readers
7.
sissy
seattle
April 19th, 2010
8:51 am
Until I read Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone magazine, I had no
idea just how pervasive the influence of Goldman Sachs is in the
Democratic Party. I have read similar articles since then. When Goldman
was on the verge of completely going under like Lehman and Bear Stearns,
our Democratic Congress gave them everything they needed , from taxpayer
money, to save themselves and grow even larger. President Obama was also
in complete agrement with these deals.

Somehow, the Democrtic Party has fooled a lot of uneducated working
people into thinking that they represent them, when they actually are in
the employ of Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street banking
establishment
  Recommend  Recommended by 164 Readers
13.
Kevin J.
VT
April 19th, 2010
8:52 am
The current Democratic Congress has been in power since 2006. They have
a huge majority. They also have the White House. Yet, not one of these
bankers who destroyed our economy and then enriched themselves with
taxpayer money, has been investigated , let alone indicted. For whom are
our Congress members really working? For whom is our President really
working?
  Recommend  Recommended by 150 Readers
3.
Phil in the mountains of Kyushu
Japan
April 19th, 2010
8:51 am
Yes -- it's a racket. Yes -- as to need for huge reform.

But even in joining you in these "yesses," I ask that you please know
that, so long as the biz and law schools continue their amoral
trajectories, change at the top will scarcely affect the masses of most
cynical greed and sociopathic opportunism growing from the bottom.

We I invoke need for reform also at the professional schools, I
necessarily draw parallel need to the rest of that vast incubating
ground -- to the rest of corporate ed in all its sequested silos, and to
K-12 churning on ever after the dehumanization of standardized tests.

It's all got to change. Educators need to take the schools away from
admin, and return it to teachers who understand the central role of
actual humans, actual humanity -- always -- in all evolutions of all
branches of literacy. The cons and frauds atop high finance learned to
live as if in something like Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death"
castle -- oblivious to people, communities -- all humanity except the
most shrewdly cynical forms still poisoning so many.
  Recommend  Recommended by 139 Readers
21.
Cliff Arnebeck
Columbus, OH
April 19th, 2010
9:27 am
As brilliantly described in Eliot Spitzer’s Valentine’s Day letter to
the editor of the Washington Post the George W. Bush Administration were
complicit with the ”looters in loafers.”

The irrefutable truth of Spitzer’s letter, coinciding with Spitzer’s
testimony to Congress on behalf of all the states that had tried, but
been blocked by the Bush Administration, to regulate predatory lending
was the reason for the targeting for criminal investigation by the Bush
Justice Department of Eliot Spitzer. It was Spitzer’s extraordinary
gifts as a public interest prosecutor, rather than his ordinary
vulnerability to the temptation of sexual prostitution, that got him in
trouble with the law.

Karl Rove, more out of desperation than premeditated gall, in the 2000
election cycle positioned George W. Bush as the “reformer with results”
to counter John McCain’s widely accepted image as a campaign finance
reformer. “Results” referred to Bush’s strong pro-business posture in
Texas as Governor there. McCain and Rove’s arch rival John Weaver had
trounced Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary. Thus emerged the unholy
alliance of Rove with Tom Donahue and Dick Cheney on the business side
to announce, develop and implement an open season for big business on
the American public without any worry of regulation or prosecution from
government.

Is it “looting” when it has been licensed by the government? Will
Goldman Sachs raise as a defense to the SEC’s prosecution the fact that
they thought, with good reason, that they were allowed to do what they did?

Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney
Columbus, OH
  Recommend  Recommended by 138 Readers
12.
R. Law
Texas
April 19th, 2010
8:52 am
Quite right, Dr. K-

It has been increasingly apparent since the days of Boesky and Milken
that capitalism was being looted from the board-rooms and corporate jets.

This was facilitated by consultants, accountants, bankers and lawyers,
AND by the constant flood of 401-K dollars arriving each 1st and 15th -
new ' sucker money ' that also helped cover up any past mistakes.

Anyone who was not aware of this and the blatant, wholesale abandonment
of fiduciary responsibility to share-holders was just not watching - Joe
Nocera had described it in rivetting detail in his NYTimes piece on Home
Depot's annual meeting:

http://select.nytimes.com...

Continuing on a theme, the head of Home Depot at that time soon retired
with a nice package and went to work at a private equity outfit, then
headed the effort to take Chrysler private, and lo and behold, got
bailed out with General Motors.

The common thread through much of Wall Street has nothing to do with
good 'ol fashioned capitalism - the proof of that is looking at Ford
Motor Company and what happens when the people who actually founded a
company still show up at the office.
  Recommend  Recommended by 134 Readers
83.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Woodstock
Princeton, N.J.
April 19th, 2010
10:28 am
Of course, these mortgages could never have been made but for the
realtors who convinced Buyers and Sellers prices should go up and real
estate appraisers who backed them up with their appraisals, which were
used to make the loans.

Worse than that is the fact that the politicians helping these schemes
along are the Reagon/Bush/Cheyneyites who have been determined to
bankrupt the government so as to eliminate taxes and give the 'NeoCons'
free hands for as long as memory serves.

Thus we get wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with Iran and North Korea 'in
the batters cage'. We get Cold War redux because we have to make sure
the terrorists don't get nukes, etc.

How silly of us not to worry about these guyss 'til now just because
we're concentrating on getting the jobs they knocked out from under us
just so we can save our houses and eat.
  Recommend  Recommended by 124 Readers
143.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
G. Geoffrey Lutz
New Orleans
April 19th, 2010
11:03 am
Who was Paulson's counterparty in the Credit Default Swap tied to this
CDO? AIG? If so, we gave AIG money that then went to Paulson. Clearly,
if I can buy fire insurance on a house I don't own but caused to be
built of straw, I'm going to make out. If the US then backs the
insurance company, I'm really making out! Why oh why is there no move
afoot to at least require ownership of the insured instrument? Surely
anything else is just gambling and serves no beneficial purpose in the
marketplace. You're not hedging a risk if you don't own it.
  Recommend  Recommended by 98 Readers
187.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
David Nixon
Pittsburgh, PA
April 19th, 2010
11:50 am
I think you understate the nature of the fraud that the SEC charges. You
say, “the S.E.C. is charging that Goldman created and marketed
securities that were deliberately designed to fail, so that an important
client could make money off that failure.” From my limited readings
about the bond market, a bond trader would likely say that if this
shocks you, you have no business being in the market.

What you don’t mention is that 1) the long side buyer had specifically
asked for a neutral third party evaluation of the Collateralized Debt
Obligation in question and 2), as I understand it, Goldman is charged
with passing off Paulson’s (the short side, important client) “designed
to fail” structure as if it was the neutral evaluation that had been
requested and did not disclose that fact to the long side buyer. That’s
the fraud, as I understand it. If the charge holds up, it means Goldman
regarded their own customers as legitimate targets for fraudulent
fleecing and the Goldman reputation will probably never recover and it
shouldn’t.

But there’s potentially much more. Much of the synthetic CDOs designed
by Goldman Sachs, remember, carried risk-free or nearly risk-free
ratings from the ratings agencies. Lewis, in The Big Short, quotes a
former Goldman CDO trader as saying that the ratings agencies didn’t
understand these instruments and that the investment banks would provide
or offer their models for the agencies to use in assigning ratings.
Without the high ratings, long side investors might see these
instruments for what they truly were. The representations made to the
ratings agencies by the banks concerning these models becomes, I hope, a
focus of exhaustive SEC investigation. Of course it is possible that
Goldman and the other banks took a neutral,
let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may stance when these models were offered
to the ratings agencies, if they were. If you believe that, there’s a
guy named Paulson who might be persuaded to design an investment for
your consideration.
  Recommend  Recommended by 97 Readers
4.
Micahel S.
Pacific Northwest
April 19th, 2010
8:51 am
When Lloyd Blankfein said that he and the people at Goldman Sachs were
"doing God's Work"; what he meant was that when they did what they did
at Goldman Sachs they acted like they were gods. With their ties to the
Obama Whitehouse and to the democratic Senate Committee Chairmen, in
some ways, I suppose they are almost omnipotent in our
political/financial establishment. So, unfortunately, it seems that Mr.
Blankfein was right.
  Recommend  Recommended by 97 Readers
17.
GF
NY, NY
April 19th, 2010
8:52 am
When average folk start connecting the dots...Goldman Sachs fraud (on an
international scale, no less) to job loss and employment stagnation...I
wouldn't want to be the GOP. I mean, Scott Brown's Sunday interview on
"Face The Nation" went badly enough.
  Recommend  Recommended by 87 Readers
22.
Darrell Hampton
Dayton Ohio
April 19th, 2010
9:28 am
“A process facilitated by Bush-era federal regulators, who both failed
to curb abusive lending and prevented states from taking action on their
own.” How does a group of intelligent people do that by accident? They
cannot, without being morally bankrupted by a clear disregard for the
welfare of other Americans. Here, in Dayton Ohio, at the VA Medical
Center we have a Coordinator of the substance abuse program who owns a
beer and wine “hole in the wall” who sells his products, along with
crack pipes, to Veterans that he knows suffer from liver disease. When I
reported this to the proper authorities their response was “well it’s
not against the law”. It is these types of double standards that leave
our easily impressionable young people without hope and condemning us as
hypocrites, for teaching them morals and decency. They point to these
crooks and say “Well they don’t play by rules, why should I”?

Predators, preying on the intellectually or physically weak are still
bullies who should be put down. We need criminal statues with mandatory
non- probation sentences for these people. Somebody tell me how these
people are any less a criminal than a Robber or the drug dealer who
victimizes our citizenry? Why is it that crimes committed by the less
educated of our society have clear and concise penalties but when the
crimes are committed by people with MBA’s or our politicians we become
ambiguous about the appropriate response? All of a sudden our response
must be looked at from a plethora of different angles and we are
encouraged not to jump to conclusions. A criminal is a criminal, period!
If we do not have the laws to hold them accountable we need to make
some. We make laws against new crimes (internet, new drugs) all the
time. What makes stealing on Wall Street exempt from creative
prosecutions? And we need to stop allowing them on our TV screens
spreading disingenuous tales about their culpability. “Doing God’s work”
oh really Mr. Blankfein. Was that Devil named John Paulson with you
while you were working for the Lord?
  Recommend  Recommended by 84 Readers

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********