Papantonio on banks

Mike Papantonio was guest hosting today for Ed Schultz's radio show. His opening monologue was outstanding. You can watch it here. He starts by quoting Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

Jefferson: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous our liberties than standing armies."

Lincoln: "I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy."

Pap then goes into a righteous, delicious diatribe on the banks. He compares them to organized crime families. (Recall the Soprano bank tape.) For example, Goldman Sachs profited from the mortgage crises that they helped to create, selling it to innocent buyers through intentional fraud and then betting against it. When it went sour they engineered a bailout through the Fed chairman, previous of Goldman Sachs. And they kept all the profits they made on the crime.

The banks promised to take the bailout money and start lending again to Main Street to kick start new businesses. But they didn't and instead paid out humongous bonuses to the very crooks that crashed the economy. The banks also promised that they'd agree to new regulations, yet immediately after hired hundreds of lobbyists to delay, obstruct, water down and overturn that legislation. One of the most vociferous of lobbyists was Dimon of JP Morgan, whose $3-5 billion dollar 'mistake' Pap thinks will total $30-50 billion in equity lost.

To add insult to injury, the Justice Dept. will do nothing about it, nothing. The Attorney General recently announced that Lehman Brothers did nothing wrong and hence they will not seek prosecution. This despite Lehman's continued lies that there were no problems up to the day they went bankrupt. Not one of these bankers was charged with a crime and not one went to jail.

He closed with another Jefferson quote: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, the banks and the corporations the grow up around [them] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless." As Pap said in the opening, this was one accurate omen from an American founder.