PRESS RELEASE
Machinists' President Blasts Bailout;
Says Bankers Should Go To Jail Without Bail
Sept. 26, 2008 (EIRNS)—The International President of the International Association of Michinists (IAM), Thomas Buffenbarger, issued a statement on Sept. 25 opposing the Paulson and other bailout schemes. Lyndon LaRouche heartily approved of the Buffenbarger statement, which appears in full here:
Just Say No!
For the last eight years, the Wizards of Wall Street have operated an international Ponzi scheme. They created a blizzard of paper derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, structured investment vehicles—which they sold to the global gurus of high finance.
The Wizards made a conscious choice to manufacture what is now non-investment grade paper rather than manufacture consumer products. And by creating and trading in commercial paper confetti, they made billions in profits for their firms and millions in bonuses for themselves.
But like all Ponzi schemes, their get-rich-fast machine ground to a halt. The lubricants—timely lower interest rates and constant infusions of liquidity by the Federal Reserve and other central bankers—dried up. And now, after eight years of global hyper-greed, an estimated 47 trillion dollars worth of worthless paper is raining down on Wall Street and the bourses of the world.
The deeper that sea of bad debt gets, the more frantic becomes their cries of rescue me. This is not an American phenomenon. Virtually every member of the G-8 is impacted by this downpour of debt-based terror.
And yet, for the last fifteen months, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury Department and their counterparts on five continents have failed repeatedly to prevent the collapse of this Ponzi scheme. Not that they havent tried. Together, the central bankers have increased liquidity by over a trillion dollars; let non-bank firms borrow at below prime rates; picked winners and losers; and consistently deprecated the true dimensions of this crisis.
Now, the same government officials who said let us handle it, we know what were doing, are saying something very different. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are running down the street shouting the vault's empty; the money's gone.
They want America's workers, businesses and taxpayers to fill the void, to purchase an undeterminable, unfathomable and unknowable amount of debt from the single largest financial failure since the South Seas Company collapsed in the 1700s.
These two George Bush appointees are demanding that Congress pass a $1,000,000,000,000 bailout package. They want the money in a small bill in the next ninety-six hours, or else.
I urge Congress to Just say, NO!
It is bad enough that Bernanke and Paulson were in cahoots with the bank robbers. But by pointing a gun at the American people and demanding more than all the gold in Fort Knox (and the New York Federal Reserve Bank), they are abetting the wildest bank robbery ever.
Make no mistake. This is a bank heist, nothing more, nothing less. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation should be the first responders.
Those Wizards of Wall Street should be arrested, their computers, bank accounts and records seized, their rights read to them, and their cases placed on a rocket docket. They should be treated as the common criminals they have become.
We cannot undo the damage they have done to our economy. But we can turn a massive bailout into a monumental jail-in.
