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Oct. 1, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

09:11

1162 Kill Bill - The Bailout

The real reason why the US financial bailout stalled... www.freedomainradio.com Article excerpts from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/22/dirty-secret-of-the-bailo_n_128294.html

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	Hi everybody, it's Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	I am just taking a break from reading the audiobook of my new book, How Not to Achieve Freedom, which will be out in a few days, to talk a little bit about some of the misperceptions around this recent Kill Bill incident where 228 to 208 Was the vote which rejected the $700 billion bailout bill.
	And people are a little confused about this.
	I just thought I would wave the magic wand of philosophical clarity and see if we can't bring some sharper relief in terms of perceptiveness to this nonsense.
	So, some people are saying, well, you see, the American public was against the bailout bill, and that is why it didn't pass.
	Congressmen were receiving calls a hundred to one against the bill, and therefore they voted with the conscience of the American public, and this is, well, this is nonsense.
	This is not how democracy or any government system works.
	So, I just wanted to mention a little bit, you know, we anarchists are constantly criticized for not wanting a society based on law, but there are 32 words in the, what we can call it an act, this three-page doodle of executive tyranny, which said this, this 32 words, which I think is quite important and quite interesting to look at.
	This is from the bill itself.
	Decisions by the secretary pursuant to the authority of this act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
	You know, we anarchists are constantly criticized.
	Oh, you want a society without rules?
	People! We have a society without rules!
	We have 700 billion dollars being placed in the personal piggy bank of a bunch of sociopaths to hand out as they see fit.
	The stereotypical anarchic society at the moment.
	We have executive branches operating completely outside the reach of law.
	We have King saying that not only are they not subject to the law, but they can make up whatever they want.
	There can be no review. When Bush is interviewed, there's no tape recordings allowed.
	It's not legally binding. He's not under oath.
	I mean... The government is excluded from the law.
	We have the worst aspects of what is traditionally called anarchy at the moment, and pretending otherwise is madness.
	You might want to read, by the way, an interesting book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which actually lays out a very strong legal case that George Bush couldn't be prosecuted for causing the deaths of thousands of Americans.
	But, sadly, you see the DAs and the cops don't have any time to pursue genocidal murderers because You see, they have to pick you up for having a bit of vegetation in your pocket or going two kilometers or miles an hour over the speed limit.
	That is the kind of law we have.
	It's just a series of shakedowns.
	Anyway, let's just have a quick, brief spin through this.
	Why was the bailout rejected?
	Well, I don't think it's brain surgery.
	The bailout was rejected not because congressmen care about the American public's wishes or preferences.
	I mean, the American public voted in the Republicans to bring government down in size, and government has grown 40%.
	Over the past seven years, so you could go on and on, but it's complete nonsense.
	Is it because it's too radical a step too quickly and they don't have time to review it?
	Well, it's complete nonsense.
	The Patriot Act was passed a couple of weeks after 9-11.
	Thousands of pages. No one had any clue what was in it.
	So they don't care about not having time to review this, quote, legislation, which is really just a public treasury money grab.
	They don't care about reviewing legislation.
	They don't care about the haste in which something happens.
	But I'll tell you what they do care about, what politicians do care about, and how democracy, as I'm sure you know, really works.
	Well... People use their hell-sent charisma to ingratiate themselves to the people, as Sophists did in the days of Socrates before they triggered his death by hemlock.
	People use their charisma to feed you bullshit and have you think that it's pate.
	And then they go to Washington and they grab money from the public purse, i.e.
	from you, and they hand it out to their friends.
	That's how politics works, of course.
	This is no shock.
	So why did they reject the $700 billion bill?
	Well, it's very simple. The congressmen rejected the bill for the most part because they didn't get to share in the spoils.
	There wasn't enough of a payout to the thugs on Capitol Hill, which would have given them the money to hand out to the people who sent them to Washington to get that money.
	Is it because the American public don't want to bail out?
	Well, no, of course. If you remember the savings and loan crisis from the 80s, hundreds of billions of dollars went into the hands of those people.
	But the difference was that money was controlled by a variety of oversight committees, which could sell that money in return for favors.
	The reason that Congress rejected the bill was because it concentrates far too much political power, i.e.
	money to hand out, in the hands of our good friend Dr.
	Frankenberry Paulson. That's all that's going on.
	And what they're going to do, the bill, I guarantee you, the bill is going to be passed.
	But the way that the bill is going to be passed is there's going to be, let me just see here.
	Our friend Mr.
	Dodd, Chris Dodd, had proposed a bailout legislation of his own, which critically calls for an oversight board that not only includes the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, but congressionally appointed non-governmental officials, and would require the president to appoint an independent inspector general to investigate the Treasury Asset Program.
	In other words, Congress is saying, look, if we don't get a piece of the action, we're not giving you any action, right?
	And that's all that's happening.
	And so what's going to happen is the bill is going to go back into committee.
	It's going to get diluted. It's going to get many more Congress on board to feast on the fallen sailors overboard like a pack of sharks.
	And all they're saying is, look, we're not in the action, so we're not going to pass it.
	And remember, of course, it really was not that strong a rejection.
	What was it? 228 to 205.
	So the bill is going to go back.
	It's going to get diluted.
	It's going to get the goodies, the evil money, the blood money is going to get spread out among the congressmen and then they're going to vote to approve it again.
	There are three historical equivalents to this which have been mentioned.
	I'll just touch on them briefly. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s pumped a total of $35 billion into U.S. corporations and financial institutions.
	There was close government supervision and quid pro quos at every step of the way.
	So what that means, of course, is that the money was spread out to congressmen so that the congressmen could give it away in return for political favors.
	That's the power they have, is to hand out money.
	It's not wisdom or anything like that.
	They're not philosophers. The Home Owners Loan Corporation, which eventually refinanced one in five mortgage banks, did not operate to bail out banks but to save homeowners.
	And what that means is that the money was handed out to congressmen who could then hand it out to their political friends, right?
	They don't want this couple of guys operating with all this money which is taken away from the money they can hand out.
	It's just mafia competition.
	That's all it is. The Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1980s created a mop-up.
	The damage of the first speculative mortgage meltdown, the S&L collapse, did not pump money to rescue bad investments.
	It sorted out good assets from bad after the fact and made sure to purge bad executives as well as bad loans.
	Now, of course, the government has no idea what is a good loan and what is a bad loan.
	The government has no idea what is a good investment or a bad investment.
	But if you are given the power to either keep or fire executives to approve or disapprove loans in some fascistic, communist, central planning, Stalin-style council, then what you have is you have the big guns, which you can point at various people, get them to give you favors in return for either approving or disapproving their loans, which, of course, the government has no idea.
	Whether that's what is a good loan or a good executive or a bad executive.
	But it certainly does understand when it has gifts to give to its friends and punishments to dole out to its enemies.
	And that's all this is about. So there's going to be a retrenchment.
	Paulson and company are going to realize that they have to share some of the blood money like any pack of thieves.
	And so this bill is going to end up being resurrected and passed, but guaranteed there will be congressional oversight, which of course means that they want their share of the blood to hand out to the vampires they represent.
	So I hope that this helps just a little bit to clear up what's happening.
	Look for it in the days or weeks to come.
	And I look forward to seeing you at freedomainradio.com.
	Feel free to drop by, pick up some free books, free audio PDFs.
	The new book should be out in a couple of days called How Not to Achieve Freedom.
	And I will talk to you soon.

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