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The Real Housewives of Wall StreetWhy is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?


That doesn't seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called "giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all." If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like.

This whole setup — in which millionaires and billionaires gambled on mountains of dangerous securities, with taxpayers providing the stake and assuming almost all of the risk — is the reason that it's insanely premature for Wall Street to claim that the bailouts have actually made money for the government. We simply can't make that determination until the final bill comes in on all the dicey securities we financed during the bailout feeding frenzy.

Baldy wrote:Nice try, kalm, but the free market would have let everything run it's course without TARP or the bailouts. You're little article is showing the invisible hand of government intervention at it's finest.

Thank you, President Obama...

kalm wrote:

Baldy wrote:Nice try, kalm, but the free market would have let everything run it's course without TARP or the bailouts. You're little article is showing the invisible hand of government intervention at it's finest.

Thank you, President Obama...

No way dude. Everyone knows that rich folks on Wall Street are the producers. They provide the capital that drives the market. They just aren't deregulated enough.

Baldy wrote:

kalm wrote:
No way dude. Everyone knows that rich folks on Wall Street are the producers. They provide the capital that drives the market. They just aren't deregulated enough.

Exactly, we need all the government intervention we can get in a free market economy.
Just ask Fannie and Freddie or Amtrak. Everything the government touches turns to gold.

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Baldy wrote: Exactly, we need all the government intervention we can get in a free market economy.
Just ask Fannie and Freddie or Amtrak. Everything the government touches turns to gold.

yeah! just ask Americans who remember 1929-1938!

the free market and unregulated capitalism was AWESOME!

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Baldy wrote: Exactly, we need all the government intervention we can get in a free market economy.
Just ask Fannie and Freddie or Amtrak. Everything the government touches turns to gold.

yeah! just ask Americans who remember 1929-1938!

the free market and unregulated capitalism was AWESOME!

Baldy wrote:

kalm wrote:
No way dude. Everyone knows that rich folks on Wall Street are the producers. They provide the capital that drives the market. They just aren't deregulated enough.

Exactly, we need all the government intervention we can get in a free market economy.
Just ask Fannie and Freddie or Amtrak. Everything the government touches turns to gold.

kalm wrote:

Baldy wrote: Exactly, we need all the government intervention we can get in a free market economy.
Just ask Fannie and Freddie or Amtrak. Everything the government touches turns to gold.

RR act, Homestead Act, CCC, GI Bill, Interstate Highways...

There can be a difference between corruption/intervention and stimulus and regulation. But you have to enforce anti trust laws and publicly finance elections.

Baldy wrote:

kalm wrote:
RR act, Homestead Act, CCC, GI Bill, Interstate Highways...

There can be a difference between corruption/intervention and stimulus and regulation. But you have to enforce anti trust laws and publicly finance elections.

Antitrust laws?

We have covered this before. Government privilege is the only reason monopolies exist.

kalm wrote:

Baldy wrote:
Antitrust laws?

We have covered this before. Government privilege is the only reason monopolies exist.

Im not sure what that means.

Baldy wrote:

kalm wrote:
Im not sure what that means.

With the very rare exception...maybe twice in world history, monopolies aren't able to exist in the private marketplace. Go back and look in history. The ICC monopolized the rail and trucking industry, the FCC monopolized radio and TV industry. Various government entities monopolized utility companies, the post office, etc, etc, etc...

"Antitrust" legislation is a red herring...

kalm wrote:

Baldy wrote:
With the very rare exception...maybe twice in world history, monopolies aren't able to exist in the private marketplace. Go back and look in history. The ICC monopolized the rail and trucking industry, the FCC monopolized radio and TV industry. Various government entities monopolized utility companies, the post office, etc, etc, etc...

"Antitrust" legislation is a red herring...

In regards to national economies there's no such thing as the private marketplace. There are black markets and those to have monopolies. Dont you understand the object of the game?