Explosive cocktail of fraud, lies and theft in the US

Here are some news that I have been stacking on my desk but didn't had an opportunity to write about for the past couple of weeks. But interestingly, all these frauds and lies lead to one and single direction: the reverse Robin-Hood - the forced, unilateral, undemocratic transfer of wealth from the dollar-barer to the Corporatrocracy and Establishment in the US.

Please also note - if you haven't noticed it yet - that I have decided to use the "dollar-barer" term explicitly, and avoid as much as I can the term "tax-payer" because the latter one is very misleading for the following reasons:

• Every person who owns US dollars is being stollen by inflation, not just the US tax-payer.
• This include the foreign individuals, companies, countries who have US dollars on their bank account.
• This also include people who are in the US but who do not pay taxes, maybe because they are too young, too old, or have too little income.
• It's not only the US tax-payer who is going to pay the bill but probably the children or grand-children of the same US tax-payer.

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Looking for Charles O. “Chuck” Prince, ousted 15 months ago as Citigroup Inc.’s chief executive officer? Just call his extension at the bank, which still pays for his office and secretary in Midtown Manhattan.

Former Citigroup investment-banking head Michael Klein also has a free office and secretary after receiving a $34.3 million exit package when he quit in July 2008. John Reed, 70, who hasn’t worked at the bank since he resigned as co-CEO in 2000 with a $5 million parting bonus, is entitled to an office and secretary for as long as he wants.

Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill, who retired as chairman in 2006, is ending a 10-year consulting contract with the bank in April after just three years. The agreement gave him millions of dollars in perks, including an office, car and driver and use of company aircraft, which he gave up in February.

[...] Citigroup posted a record $18.7 billion loss last year, forcing the bank to seek a $52 billion bailout to stave off a crisis of confidence among depositors. [My comment: where's the logic?]

Merrill Lynch & Co., which had to sell itself last year to Bank of America Corp., provides an office and assistant to former CEO Stan O’Neal for the three years from his October 2007 resignation, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Merrill still maintains offices for ex-CEOs David Komansky, Daniel Tully and William Schreyer, two people familiar with the matter said.

[...] Kennedy Thompson, ousted last year as Wachovia Corp.’s CEO, gets an office and assistant for three years, according to an SEC filing. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., which received $25 billion in bailout funds, is providing the office since buying Wachovia on Dec. 31, spokeswoman Mary Eshet said.

[...] When JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chairman William Harrison retired in December 2006, the New York-based bank agreed to give him office space and administrative support until he turns 70 in 2013, according to a filing. The cost was estimated at $267,000 a year. That’s more than five times the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of the nationwide median household income in 2007.

[...] Prince, 59, retired in November 2007, as the bank’s subprime losses approached a record $9.83 billion in the fourth quarter of that year. After paying him a total of $66.8 million in the three previous years, Citigroup gave Prince a $10.4 million bonus for his last 10 months in the job, according to a filing.

He also got perks worth about $1.5 million a year, including an office, assistant, car and driver and any resulting income taxes, according to the filing.

[...] Reed received a $5 million parting bonus that year and a $2 million annual “retirement benefit,” according to a filing.

He also received financial-planning services for up to five years, a car and driver, an office and secretarial support “for as long as you deem useful,” according to the company.

[...] Weill got an office and secretary under the consulting contract awarded when he retired as chairman in 2006, according to a Citigroup filing. He also received a $1 million-a-year retirement pension, consulting fees of $3,846 a day for up to 45 days a year, a car and driver, private security, financial- planning fees and medical and dental coverage.

Ripping off the shareholder on top of the rest?

Clinton Urges China to Keep Buying U.S. Treasury Securities
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to continue buying U.S. Treasury bonds to help finance President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, saying “we are truly going to rise or fall together.”

The US is so desperate to get funding from China and other countries... but this is not going to last for the following reasons:

• China, Japan, etc. are starting to get worried by the US destroying the USD
• Even though they weren't worried about the USD, they have their own issues, and will need to spend their current reserve to help their people
• Even if they weren't worried, and didn't want to spend locally but "invest" it (what kind of investment is it to buy junk bonds anyway?) they don't have enough money to sustain $4 trillion yearly budgets in the US, not even considering the mega bailouts that are not accounted yet. According to Wikipedia, China only had a reserve of about $2 trillion and Japan of about $1 trillion...
  

Remember Obama's promise of change? It was of course either a big lie, or a promise to change for the worst!

(MarketWatch) Saying the time has come to "usher in a new era," President Barack Obama unveiled a sweeping $3.6 trillion budget for fiscal 2010 on Thursday, making a major down payment on his priorities and marking a historic shift toward more government involvement in health care, energy and education while raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The president's 134-page budget blueprint predicts eye-popping deficits for fiscal years 2009 and 2010 [...]

Talking about the USD, it's going to be ugly rather sooner than later, since the ugly news start stacking up. Even if the USD and the US equity markets have been resisting quite remarkably but illogically, I think if they don't correct soon, we are headed for another crash within the current crash...

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer deemed too important to fail, may get a commitment for as much as $30 billion in new government capital after a record quarterly loss, said two people familiar with the matter.

The insurer may also be allowed to make lower payments on government loans, said the people, who declined to be identified because there was no public announcement. New York-based AIG may forfeit part of stakes in its two largest non-U.S. life insurance divisions to lower the firm’s debt, the people said.

AIG, first saved from collapse in September with a package that grew to $150 billion, had to restructure its bailout after failing to sell enough units to repay the U.S. Firms including banks relied on AIG to back more than $300 billion of assets through derivative contracts as of Sept. 30, making the insurer a “systematically significant failing institution” that has to be propped up, according to the Treasury.

More fraud, theft and reverse-Robin-Hood.

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s administration will seek congressional approval for as much as $750 billion in new aid to bolster U.S. financial institutions if it is needed, White House budget director Peter Orszag said.

“If additional efforts become necessary, we’ll work with Congress on the scale and scope of them,” Orszag said today on ABC’s “This Week” program. “The budget is intending to be responsible. We put a placeholder in there just as an insurance policy.”

The black-whole is sucking more and more money. Of course, this money is not lost for everybody...