Month: October 2011

Sometimes, There is Truth in Justice

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A federal court judge just said that two key prosecution witnesses are not credible because they were motivated by racism and politics”

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in an order today lambasted two key prosecution witnesses in the State House vote-buying case as being motivated by political ambition and racial prejudice.

Thomson said Republicans Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale and former Rep. Benjamin Lewis of Dothan had ulterior motives when they assisted investigators in the case. Beason and Lewis were key prosecution witnesses in the case, in which VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor and others were charged with offering and taking bribes to try to get a gambling bill approved in the Alabama Legislature. The two Republicans said they approached FBI agents after they felt gambling interests made improper offers to try to secure their votes on the bill.

“The evidence introduced at trial contradicts the self-serving portrait of Beason and Lewis as untouchable opponents of corruption. In reality, Beason and Lewis had ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias,” Thompson wrote.

“The court finds that Beason and Lewis lack credibility for two reasons. First, their motive for cooperating with F.B.I. investigators was not to clean up corruption but to increase Republican political fortunes by reducing African-American voter turnout. Second, they lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent,” Thompson wrote.

He’s allowing the testimony, but he is allowing the defense to present the evidence of racism and political dirty tricks at trial.

Still, if I were a prosecutor, and the judge just told me that their star witnesses are racist scum, and he’s also sent a message to the prosecutors that the traditional “all white jury” is not an option, and I’d be mainlining antacid right now.

H/t TPM.
gee, you think?

It Appears that Batsh%$ Insane is Bad for Business

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Because it looks like the big corporate fat cat donors are not supporting the Republicans as one would expect:

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just about doubled the haul of their counterparts, the National Republican Congressional Committee. The DCCC pulled in $6.64 million, while the NRCC brought in just $3.8 million. While the NRCC has more cash on hand (around $12.2 million to the DCCC’s around $9.5 million) and slightly less debt, over the course of the year the DCCC is outraising the team with the big House majority.

The year-long totals show the DCCC raising nearly $48 million to the NRCC’s just over $44 million.

I think that the Republican Party Presidential Primary clown show has convinced business executives that Republicans are simply not a good investment, because while one can price risk, you can’t price uncertainty, and insane motherf%$#er teabaggers are the very definition of uncertainty.

God Bless Gawker

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Call Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on His Cell Phone and Cheer Him Up

It’s been a rough day for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. His company reported a humiliating $428 million quarterly loss this morning, just the second in Goldman’s 12-year history as a public company. We figured he might like a sympathy call from the Occupy Wall Street folks, who know how to get by with less. Here’s his cell phone number.

Last week’s effort to put Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit in touch with the Wall Street protesters worked so well we thought we’d expand the program.

Here are some pick-me-up messages you might want to deliver to Blankfein: “I know you just lost half a billion dollars, but look on the bright side—you’ve set aside $10 billion in bonuses to pay out to your 34,200 employees.” Or, “Hey, just do what I do when I run out of money—head over to the Fed’s discount window and borrow more at no interest.” Or, “Just think how much worse the loss would be if you hadn’t had the foresight to snag that $13 billion taxpayer-financed pass-through bailout via AIG.” Or, “We’ve all got to eat a shitty deal once in a while.”

…………

Heh.
H/t MP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Old Harbor Bank,Clearwater, FL
  2. Decatur First Bank, Decatur, GA
  3. Community Capital Bank, Jonesboro, GA
  4. Community Banks of Colorado, Greenwood Village, CO

Full FDIC list

Two weeks of 4 bank failures in a row.

I’m not sure if this is a trend, I’d wait another week on that, but we are back to (exactly) a two bank failure per week.

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Another Inspector Renault Moment

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

So, now that we are looking into the corruption and cronyism in Mubarak’s Egypt, and it turns out that it has its roots in the American led privatization of the Egyptian economy, just like the rampant corruption in post-Soviet Russia:

Beginning two decades ago, the United States government bankrolled an Egyptian think tank dedicated to economic reform. A different outcome is only now becoming visible in the fallout from Egypt’s Arab Spring.

Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle — with the president’s son Gamal Mubarak at the center. Over time, members of the group would assume top roles in Egypt’s ruling party and government.

Today, Gamal Mubarak and four of those think tank members are in jail, charged with squandering public funds in the sale of public resources, lands and government-run companies as part of a dramatic restructuring. Some have fled the country, pilloried amid the public outrage over insider deals and corruption that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

“It became a crony capitalism,” Magda Kandil, the think tank’s new executive director, said of the privatization program advocated by its founders. Because of the corruption, the center now estimates, the assets that Egypt has sold off since 1991 have netted only about $10 billion, $90 billion less than their estimated worth.

The privatization saga is a cautionary tale about the power and perils of U.S. foreign aid — most notably the nearly $8 billion that the United States has provided to Egypt since the 1990s to push the country toward economic reforms.

This is not a bug, it’s a feature. This sort of economic liberalization is all about creating a few corrupt individuals, because it’s cheaper to allow cronies to get siphon off a billion or two while our banksters steal the rest than it is to allow those resources to accrue legally to the workers and the country.

I may seem cynical about this, but the corruption in Egypt, or Russia, or pretty much all of other privatization schemes outside of the Scandinavian countries run this way, so I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the actual goal of these policies.

Mission Accomplished

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While on some objective level, there might be some advantages (For officers who need a combat tour on their resume) to a continued US presence in Iraq, the Iraqis loath the Americans, both the military, and (in particular) the mercenaries private military contractors.

So it comes as no surprise that the Iraqis have refused to extend immunity to the military and has additionally refused to allow US bases to remain in country:

The US suffered a major diplomatic and military rebuff on Friday when Iraq finally rejected its pleas to maintain bases in the country beyond this year.

Barack Obama announced at a White House press conference that all American troops will leave Iraq by the end of December, a decision forced by the final collapse of lengthy talks between the US and the Iraqi government on the issue.

The Iraqi decision is a boost to Iran, which has close ties with many members of the Iraqi government and which had been battling against the establishment of permanent American bases.

Obama attempted to make the most of it by presenting the withdrawal as the fulfilment of one of his election promises.

“Today I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” he told reporters.

But he had already announced this earlier this year, and the real significance today was in the failure of Obama, in spite of the cost to the US in dollars and deaths, to persuade the Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki to allow one or more American bases to be kept in the country.

Obama was doing his damnedest to try to make his promise to leave Iraq a promise in name only, but the Iraqis are having none of it.

Like I said, to the degree to which Obama claims to oppose “stupid wars”, he refuses to believe that any war can be stupid.

Just as as a note, Bush’s invasion of Iraq is the just the gift that keeps on giving.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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According to Senator Sanders, a recent GAO report has uncovered pervasive conflicts of interests at the Federal Reserve.

The language is steeped in the gentility of the Senate, but I think that the short version is, “Stop the looting and start prosecuting”.

Sanders’ full press release after the break.

GAO Finds Serious Conflicts at the Fed

October 19, 2011

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 – A new audit of the Federal Reserve released today detailed widespread conflicts of interest involving directors of its regional banks.

“The most powerful entity in the United States is riddled with conflicts of interest,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said after reviewing the Government Accountability Office report. The study required by a Sanders Amendment to last year’s Wall Street reform law examined Fed practices never before subjected to such independent, expert scrutiny.

The GAO detailed instance after instance of top executives of corporations and financial institutions using their influence as Federal Reserve directors to financially benefit their firms, and, in at least one instance, themselves.  “Clearly it is unacceptable for so few people to wield so much unchecked power,” Sanders said. “Not only do they run the banks, they run the institutions that regulate the banks.”

Sanders said he will work with leading economists to develop legislation to restructure the Fed and bar the banking industry from picking Fed directors. “This is exactly the kind of outrageous behavior by the big banks and Wall Street that is infuriating so many Americans,” Sanders said.

The corporate affiliations of Fed directors from such banking and industry giants as General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers pose “reputational risks” to the Federal Reserve System, the report said. Giving the banking industry the power to both elect and serve as Fed directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest,” the report added.

The 108-page report found that at least 18 specific current and former Fed board members were affiliated with banks and companies that received emergency loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

In the dry and understated language of auditors, the report noted that there are no restrictions in Fed rules on directors communicating concerns about their respective banks to the staff of the Federal Reserve. It also said many directors own stock or work directly for banks that are supervised and regulated by the Federal Reserve. The rules, which the Fed has kept secret, let directors tied to banks participate in decisions involving how much interest to charge financial institutions and how much credit to provide healthy banks and institutions in “hazardous” condition. Even when situations arise that run afoul of Fed’s conflict rules and waivers are granted, the GAO said the waivers are kept hidden from the public.

The report by the non-partisan research arm of Congress did not name but unambiguously described several individual cases involving Fed directors that created the appearance of a conflict of interest, including:

  • Stephen Friedman In 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap Fed loans. During the same period, Friedman, chairman of the New York Fed, sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors and owned Goldman stock, something the Fed’s rules prohibited. He received a waiver in late 2008 that was not made public. After Friedman received the waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009 unbeknownst to the Fed, according to the GAO.
  • Jeffrey Immelt The Federal Reserve Bank of New York consulted with General Electric on the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing for GE under the emergency lending program while Immelt, GE’s CEO, served as a director on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  • Jamie Dimon The CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the same time that his bank received emergency loans from the Fed and was used by the Fed as a clearing bank for the Fed’s emergency lending programs. In 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns.At the time, Dimon persuaded the Fed to provide JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. He also convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.

To read a more detailed analysis of the GAO report prepared for Sen. Sanders, click here.

To read the full GAO report, click here.

If a Republican Tells You That the Sky is Blue

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Personally confirm this, because his is probably lying.

The latest case is (probably) former GOP golden boy Mark Rubio who was caught lying about his family being expelled from Cuba by Castro:

During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.

But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.

The supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year’s Senate election. Rubio — now considered a prospective 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate and a possible future presidential contender — mentions his parents in the second sentence of the official biography on his Senate Web site. It says that Mario and Oriales Rubio “came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” And the 40-year-old senator with the boyish smile and prom-king good looks has drawn on the power of that claim to entrance audiences captivated by the rhetorical skills of one of the more dynamic stump speakers in modern American politics.

The real story of his parents’ migration appears to be a more conventional immigrant narrative, a couple who came to the United States seeking a better life. In the year they arrived in Florida, the future Marxist dictator was in Mexico plotting a quixotic return to Cuba.

Rubio’s office confirmed Thursday that his parents arrived in the United States in 1956 but noted that “while they were prepared to live here permanently, they always held out the hope and the option of returning to Cuba if things improved.” They returned to Cuba several times after Castro came to power to “assess the situation with the hope of eventually moving back,” the office said in a statement.

Yeah, right.

In 1956, Castro was in exile in Mexico until December 2.

His “revolution” was little more than a quixotic joke in 1956.

His parents ditched Cuba in 1956 because they did not want to live there any more.

Lame…

Bug Hunt Accomplished…

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So Qaddafi is dead:

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman who fled into hiding after an armed uprising toppled his regime two months ago, met a violent and vengeful death Thursday in the hands of rebel fighters who stormed his final stronghold in his Mediterranean hometown Surt. At least one of his sons was also killed.

Al Jazeera television showed footage of Colonel Qaddafi, alive but bloody, as he was dragged around by armed men in Surt. The television also broadcast a separate clip of his half-naked torso, with eyes staring vacantly and an apparent gunshot wound to the head, as jubilant fighters fired automatic weapons in the air. A third video, posted on Youtube, showed excited fighters hovering around his lifeless-looking body, posing for photographs and yanking his limp head up and down by the hair.

Conflicting accounts quickly emerged about whether Colonel Qaddafi was executed by his captors, died from gunshot wounds sustained in a firefight, was mortally wounded in a NATO air strike on his escaping convoy or bled to death in an ambulance. But the images broadcast by Al Jazeera punctuated an emphatic and gruesome ending to his four decades as a ruthless and bombastic autocrat who had basked in his reputation as the self-styled king of kings of Africa.

So all that remains for NATO’s little colonial enterprise is the looting by multinational oil companies and ………… What else is there in Libya?

Tourism maybe? 

And, of course, money to gotten by looting privatizing state industry, the healthcare system, and education.

Osama Who Ever Is In Charge of al-Qaeda , Take Me Now!!!

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MTV is making a casting call for The Real World occupy Wall Street:

MTV has made an industry this year of recycling its vintage content, from Beavis & Butthead to Liquid Television.

Now the network appears to be updating or at least remixing its Real World franchise with a tip of the hat to the Occupy generation.

Casting calls in Los Angeles and New York this week are looking for …

Is there nothing that our society does not cheapen?

It’s Jobless Thursday

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And initial claims are again just marginally better,   404,000 down from last week’s adjusted 409,000, which is still too damn high.

Actually, it’s worse than it sounds, because they adjusted last week’s numbers were adjusted up from 405,000, (isn’t it always the way?) so it’s really a negligible drop.

What’s more, continuing claims rose, though emergency claims fell, probably as people hit 99 weeks.

We are not anywhere near a recovery.

On Gilad Shalit

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From a purely tactical perspective, the idea that a thousand-to-one prisoner swap makes sense before final status negotiations is stupid.

I’m don’t begrudge the actions of his family, and their obvious happiness over the release of Gilad Shalit after 5 years, but I think that this will, in the long run, make things worse, not better.

It strengthens the role of hostage taking, as Hamas has explicitly stated.

I’m not a fan of Benyamin Netanyahu, and perhaps this colors my assessment of these developments, but I see this as a political hail Mary pass* by the Israeli PM.

Recently, Netanyahu’s political popularity has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for some time, witness the tent demonstrations in Israel, and my expectation is that he will call for new elections while whatever popularity boost he had gotten remains.

*Pun not intended.

Another Stinker of a Bank Deal from

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Hoocoodanode that Biden’s Kid Would Be a Hero in All This?

Another day, another sell-out deal from Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and the Obama administration:

Talks between U.S. states and top banks over mortgage abuses are nearing agreement on a major sticking point that has bogged down settlement negotiations for more than a year.

…………

Under the proposed terms of the settlement — which could total $25 billion — banks would get broad legal immunity from state lawsuits in exchange for refinancing underwater loans, those mortgages where borrowers owe more than their homes are worth, the sources said.

…………

Banks have been holding out on a multi-billion-dollar settlement because they wanted broader legal immunity than state attorneys general were prepared to offer.

Originally, the states were only considering immunity for shortcuts taken during mortgage servicing and foreclosures, including the so-called “robo-signing” of documents to evict people behind on their mortgages.

In recent days, the state attorneys general agreed to release major banks from claims that they made legal errors when first originating the loans, such as approving loans for borrowers without verifying any income, according to two people familiar with the talks.

In exchange, banks would agree to refinance mortgages for borrowers who are current on their payments but owe more than their homes are currently worth, the sources said.

So, as Biden notes (see vid), they are getting a (pretty lame) deal from a contractor for bad gutters, and he demands to be cleared for the roof and the gutter they put in too.

But, as Yves Smith observes, the relief, such as it is, would only apply to non-securitized mortgages (about 20% of the mortgages), and the banks get to write the deal for the homeowners, meaning more booby traps for the the people who get “relief”, and probably a waiver of private liability.

BTW, this likely f%$#s the MBS investors, because without an official investigation of the securitization process, any potential private suit will be hamstrung.

And the Banksters Look to Occupy Greece

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Police with Bayonets, Yeah, this is All About Law Enforcement!

No, I’m not joking, the EU has a paramilitary force, the European Gendarmerie Force, and they have allegedly been deployed to Greece:

Did you know that the EU has its own riot police that can operate in any European country but is answerable directly to none of them? No I didn’t either.

They are called the European Gendarmerie Force (Eurogendfor) . They are based in Italy but funded and staffed by six signatory nations who are France, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Romania. However, according to the Treaty which established Eurogendfor they can operate in any EU country and are available to others who invite them to do so. The country which invites them in is refered to as the ‘Host’.

…………

What does it say if it turns out ot be true that the Greek government has ‘invited’ a quasi military riot police made of personel from other nations to operate in Greece against its own citizens. Greek police not enough? Greek military not willing to crack heads? Got to get some foreigners to do it for you?

What exactly is the difference between Eurogendfor and any other mercenary force? The Greek government could ‘invite’ any private army in. No matter how you view the status of Eurogendfor, the reality is the Greek people did not vote in favour of joining it and certainly were not asked if they wanted foreign quasi military forces to be able to operate in Greece. If this story turns out to be true then it iouwld mean that the greek government that like all governments through history that have lost all legitimacy with its own people, eventually seek military support from outside forces with which to supress its own people. Once you view it like that the word tyranny eventually enters in. And that word has extremely serious consequences.

Let’s take a step back from this. The cuts in Greece are tied up intimately with bailing out French and German banks as well as the Greek owners of Greek banks. The Greek people have been demonstrating against the bail out for months. The Greek government has ignored its people and chosen to do the bidding of the EU elite, the IMF, the ECB and most of all the banks globally.

Now it is alleged that a non-Greek militarized riot force may have arrived to enforce austerity. Whose bidding would they really be doing? Whose interests would they be serving? Could it be the banks? Have the financial class now got their own riot police who they can ship to wherever the locals try to defy them and where the local police cannot be ‘trusted’ to serve the supra-national interests of the banks?

Of course this is not how Eurogendfor is set up. I know that. But is this how it actually works nevertheless?

Obviously at this point, what we have is one blogger (at the link) who has, “checked with friends in Athens,” who have confirmed this, so this is not at the level of confirmation, and I don’t know anyone in Greece, but there is a history of such actions,* so the allegations pass my smell test.

* The history that I know of are the occupations of Latin American nations to extract debt payments in the inter-war years, which prompted Will Rogers to say, following a tour of Latin America, that he knew that he was back in the USA when he didn’t see any US Marines.

OK, This Ain’t Good…………

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Bank of America is trying to take its Merrill Lynch’s dodgy derivatives division and move it to the FDIC insured bank.

Interestingly enough, this has created a conflict between the Federal Reserve (who want to green light this) and the FDIC (who oppose the move):

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC- insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits as of midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms.

“The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution,” said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. “We should have fairly tight restrictions on that.”

(Emphasis mine)

Gee, you think? Keeping banks from moving risky investments to federally insured divisions is a bad thing?

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Bank of America’s long-term credit ratings Sept. 21, cutting both the holding company and the retail bank two notches apiece. The holding company fell to Baa1, the third-lowest investment-grade rank, from A2, while the retail bank declined to A2 from Aa3.
Moody’s Downgrade

The Moody’s downgrade spurred some of Merrill’s partners to ask that contracts be moved to the retail unit, which has a higher credit rating, according to people familiar with the transactions. Transferring derivatives also can help the parent company minimize the collateral it must post on contracts and the potential costs to terminate trades after Moody’s decision, said a person familiar with the matter.

………

Moving derivatives contracts between units of a bank holding company is limited under Section 23A of the Federal Reserve Act, which is designed to prevent a lender’s affiliates from benefiting from its federal subsidy and to protect the bank from excessive risk originating at the non-bank affiliate, said Saule T. Omarova, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law.

“Congress doesn’t want a bank’s FDIC insurance and access to the Fed discount window to somehow benefit an affiliate, so they created a firewall,” Omarova said. The discount window has been open to banks as the lender of last resort since 1914.

………

In 2009, the Fed granted Section 23A exemptions to the banking arms of Ally Financial Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, Fifth Third Bancorp, ING Groep NV, General Electric Co., Northern Trust Corp., CIT Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., among others, according to letters posted on the Fed’s website.

The central bank terminated exemptions last year for retail-banking units of JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Plc and Deutsche Bank AG. The Fed also ended an exemption for Bank of America in March 2010 and in September of that year approved a new one.

Section 23A “is among the most important tools that U.S. bank regulators have to protect the safety and soundness of U.S. banks,” Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, told Congress in March 2008.

If Bank of America is not actually insolvent, they wouldn’t be doing this.  This is outright fraud.

What’s more, the Federal Reserve is an active accomplice in this .

H/t Naked Capitalism, where Yves Smith notes:

This changes the picture completely. This move reflects either criminal incompetence or abject corruption by the Fed. Even though I’ve expressed my doubts as to whether Dodd Frank resolutions will work, dumping derivatives into depositaries pretty much guarantees a Dodd Frank resolution will fail. Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed collateral. It’s well nigh impossible to have an orderly wind down in this scenario. You have a derivatives counterparty land grab and an abrupt insolvency. Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.

But it’s even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors. No Congressman would dare vote against that. This move is Machiavellian, and just plain evil.

(emphasis original)

Evil, incompetent, and convinced of their own Objectivist virtue. Ayn Rands supermen in a nutshell.