
A better question might be, for whom is a crash coming? I mean, we know if you’re rich and on Wall Street, you’re untouchable.
Much of our current economic nightmare can be traced back through a tangled web of subsidiaries, utilities, holding companies and railroads. It truly is a game of monopoly, but for those looking to find the truth it’s anything but easy. Still, sometimes we’re dropped crumbs, crumbs most others ignore.
One such crumb was the news on February 5 that former SAC Capital LP portfolio manager Noah Freeman wouldn’t be going to prison.
Freeman was directly responsible for outing SAC Capital founder Steven A. Cohen, a billionaire with a sense of entitlement almost as large as his bank account. In numerous reports the question is asked as to whether Cohen bought off the government or not. Cohen was supposed to pay the SEC $616 million in fines in March 2013 so he wouldn’t have to suffer any ill effects of insider trading charges.
His ego and his wallet kept him out of prison in 2013, though he was slapped with a $1.8 billion penalty that November. Still, when your company can write most of that off, what’s the damage?
Freeman won’t go to jail because he helped get Cohen, but what did we really get? It seems like a lot of bureaucratic rigmarole, lawyer bills for 18 months and a lot of smiles and nods between those in the know. And when I say in the know, I mean those that know this is a complete sham.
Or do we just put Martha Stewarts in jail for this crap?
Both of these clowns deserve to be in prison for helping to bring about the Wall Street Crash of 2008, as do many of those with ties to Montana’s banking industry. But instead of trying to clean this mess up, we’re just allowing an even bigger mess to come down the pike. The only good point I can see is that much like the 1920s, Montana has been in a recession for a good 6 years now anyways – once things really go south it won’t seem that bad.
And go south they will. Most agree that Wall Street is just a house of cards and a correction of 10% to 25% is coming, and both Money News and Profit Confidential allude to this. Another word for a correction of that magnitude is a depression.
The folks on the top are worried, however. Montana’s financial industry employees will probably take a hit. I’ll never forget a woman I knew in China that couldn’t stop complaining about Leman Brothers going bye-bye in 2008 – many in Montana will be just like that, wondering what the hell happened and what the hell they can do now.
Yes, another bust is coming, and we’ll see how well we can gird ourselves. Perhaps that’s the $67 million or more in interest payments we’ll be making to the banks with these bonds for infrastructure in 2015. That’s a nice hunk of free money for the Montana banks over twenty years, or should a say a nice hunk for their overseers Back East.
Who are those suckers on the East Coast that are pulling all of our profits away? They’re tied up in the Ponzi scheme we’ve got over there right now, the Dow and its ever upward moving inch to the top.
All Towers of Babel fall, and it will be no different. The thing you need to think about is, where do you want to be standing when those pieces start to rain down upon you?
But let’s not think about this. Let’s pick up the flyers and beat the drums – Hillary is getting ready to run!
She’ll do well this time, she has to, and then everything will be alright. I’m glad she’ll be in the White House at 3 AM when that phone call comes in. And I’m glad she’s got a lot of banker friends she can talk off the ledge. I’m just not convinced that’s going to do one bit of good for me back here in Montana. No, I think when our Eastern overseers are too concerned with their own fragile footing, we’ll be left to our own devices. And then what?
Best not to think on it.