The original quotation comes from the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart, adapted from B Traven’s 1927 novel upon which the movie was based. In one of the scenes in the movie a Mexican bandit leader is trying to convince Fred C Dobbs (played by Bogart) and company that they are the Federales.
Dobbs: ‘If you’re the police where are your badges?’
Gold Hat: ‘Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!’
ILARGI
THE AUTOMATIC EARTH
All The Rage
The reason the Fed and Treasury refuse to reveal details about the assets they bought, and are still buying, is not, as they claim, that it is sensitive information, or that it could negatively affect valuations of participating banks, insurers and lenders. We know this because the true reason is revealed in the new and not-improved deal the US government reached last night with AIG. If it would be revealed what is going on behind the doors of the Washington and New York casino bathrooms, a lot of people would get very angry. The AIG accord spells out what will be paid, with taxpayers’ funds, for hundreds of billions of toxic securities and derivatives that are worth zero, close to zero or less than zero (yes, that is possible).
The bail-out plan will pay 50 cents on the dollar for paper that has no value. Perhaps paying 5 cents on the dollar would have been deemed acceptable and defensible (albeit under protest), but paying 10 times or more the realistic remaining value, and using taxpayer money to do it, is simply fraudulous. Keeping AIG alive was already an incomprehensible decision from a long term point of view. Stuffing the carcass with US taxpayer dollars, in order to support the other walking dead, is perverted necrophilia. And I don’t think having intercourse with corpses is all that popular among Americans.
Bloomberg’s court case, which seeks to force Paulson and Bernanke to reveal the assets, the sellers and the valuations, may seem to be valid under the Freedom of Information Act, but don’t forget that one of the stipulations in the original Paulson plan is that Hank the Panky can’t be sued for anything he decides under the plan. The case is perhaps a good test to see how much democracy is left in the US, but one that is by no means certain to lead to a favorable outcome. Don’t forget, the Treasury snuck in a tax change that favors, to the tune of $140 billion, the same parties that profit from the AIG asset valuation outrage. Paulson feels pretty invincible these days. And so do his friends. More
Sphere: Related ContentTags: AIG, Bernanke, Bloomberg, court case, derivatives, FOIA, Freedom Of Information act, Paulson, toxic securities
