Dear Friends,
It seems to me, government and Too Big to Fail banks, (TBTF) are colluding to steal from retirees. Now that is quite an allegation isn’t it! Imagine how bad it would be if it is true? That would mean government officials are so corrupt they are so corrupt they steal from hard working people, who have gone without so they could have some savings for their retirement, not only that but that government officials are so bereft of any decency at all they would rob those who live on a fixed income, indeed stealing that very income itself! If a private citizen were even accused of such a thing, the cost in legal expenses alone would be astronomical, so much so it would probably devastate their savings as well as future earnings. What about the executives at the TBTF banks? Imagine how evil they are if this is true? They make millions of dollars a year as the agents of the stockholders, the principles, specifically to protect the agent’s interests. Such malfeasance by a plumber would land the criminal in jail for decades. So, let’s look at the evidence, open and available for all to see, and judge for ourselves if this allegation is true.
First a little history. During the 2007-2008 financial meltdown, the banks that were considered too big to fail were given billions of taxpayer dollars, to bail them out of the catastrophic decisions they made, leading up to the financial calamity. Those same banks had lobbied congress to eliminate the Glass Steagall act, that forbade banks from using customer deposits to bet on risky ventures, the very same risky ventures that caused the crisis, several years earlier. When the risky bets went bust, taxpayers, in other words, hard working people living paycheck to paycheck, had to pay higher taxes to save people making millions of dollars a year as the executives of those banks. Look at how those executives have paid us back…
Of course, government had a hand in the crisis as well, the democrat controlled congress forced banks to make loans to people who had no means of paying the loans back, because not doing so would be racist. The big banks had to protect themselves so they grouped good loans with bad ones, chopped them up into pieces parts and sold them as derivatives. (A part of a financial product sold as an investment). They were called mortgage backed securities, (MBOs), or put another way… collateralized loan obligations. Since a bunch of loans were bailed together, the bankers and government overseers thought the good loans would keep the securities from failing, and the banks could make a tidy profit as well. When the housing market collapsed, no one could tell which MBOs were sound and which were worthless, and so the value of those securities could not be measured, since so many banks had them listed as assets, and those assets could not be quantified, the banks went bankrupt.
Since the “great recession” the security and exchange commission has found numerous acts of wrongdoing by the TBTF banks. Each time, no one was criminally charged but the bank was charged billions of dollars in fines. Those banks would then engage in further fraudulent activities, get caught, and fined again. Deutsche bank is facing a $14.000.000.000.00 fine, thats fourteen billion dollars, as I write this, Wells Fargo is under investigation for opening fraudulent accounts and charging their customers hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent overdraft fees and other fees, once again, no one is facing jail, only a huge fine by regulators, the same regulators who allowed MBOs and forced the banks to give loans to people because of race, to prevent racism. Every year the TBTF banks pay the government billions of dollars in fines for fraud, price manipulation, etc… Moreover, The economy requires zero interest rates else it would collapse instantly, as evidenced by the Federal Reserve’s reticence to raise interest rates even a point, which is another form of theft from savers, who don’t get interest for their hard earned savings, while banks loan that money back to us at 3-10 percent.
The executives at those banks however never face criminal charges for even the most heinous crimes, MF Global stealing money directly from customers segregated accounts, for example. Since it is obvious that if a criminal is not charged and allowed to skate, he or she will do it again, that is simply human nature. If you are allowed to rob a bank with impunity no matter if you are caught, what is the incentive not to? It is obvious that if government wants the criminal actions to stop they would charge, try and jail the wrongdoers, since the government always, and I mean always, give the criminals a pass, it is only common sense the government wants the criminal actions to go on. If your child draws on the wall with crayons, and you don’t punish her telling her she is an artist, she will continue to draw on the wall, because you have encouraged her.
So who is actually punished when the TBTF banks get fined billions of dollars? The executives still get their fat bonuses, in fact the executive in charge of the division the was caught fraudulently opening accounts in customers names, then charging the customers hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent fees, just retired with a fat bonus of $125,000,000, yes, that is one hundred twenty five million dollars, so no sane person could argue the executives, the people doing the crimes, are punished, in fact they are rewarded handsomely for their criminal acts. To understand who gets punished, one has to look at the result of the fine. The investigation lowers the stock value of the company, as when Goldman Sacks was fined recently, and they lower the amount of money the bank can pay shareholders as dividends. The people who hold the stock are the ones punished, by a diminishment of their investment, and lowering of the return on that investment. Who holds stocks in TBTF banks? Retirees. Probably you too if you have a 401K or do business with one of those banks.
What we have then, is a government that encourages criminal acts, overtly and subvertly, then profits from those criminal acts, which is the definition of collusion. We also have the executives at the TBTF banks, who get rewarded by those criminal acts, in increased bonuses for the “enhanced profits,” and when the charges are filed their bonuses don’t go down. Those crimes steal, not only from shareholders, but from customers as well. Since not one red cent of the fines is ever returned to the victims of the crimes, the customers, nor the indirect victims of the crimes, the shareholders, it follows that the government is not fining the wrongdoers to protect or recompense the victims, but for profit. Therefore… it is a great con game being played on the American public, to defraud us of our hard earned money several ways, by directly stealing by fraud from our savings accounts, eliminating interest on our savings, lowering the value of our investments and taking directly from our dividends, transferring that money to uber rich new class executives and government. Ever wonder why the new class always wants government to have more power? Crony crime pays, very very well…
Sincerely,
John Pepin
