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.
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.
Please understand that I don't condone extra-marital affairs. This is why I'll never date or marry neither a politician nor a professional athlete - they all have a few thangs going on on the side, and not surprisingly, so do many of their wives. But for for the first time ever (and probably the only time), I have to agree with Ben Stein - this is a case of appointed beaurocrats undermining democracy by attacking an elected official at the behest of Wall Street (shhhhhh...).
There's so many aspects of this drama I could go on about: the criminalization of prostitution by the very ones that enjoy its 'benefits', the publicizing of private lives, greed, bailouts of private corporations with public dollars, all that jazz. It makes one think twice about seeking a career in public service...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment