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by Stephen P. Pizzo

Good Morning Fellow Suckers.

Below is an frustrated rant by Gail Collins. She channels some of the outrage many of us feel these days. As those of us who still believe those silly "rights" our Founders put in the Constitution push to investigate and prosecute the Bush/Cheney crowd for their crimes, we have other criminals still running around free in the private sector.

Why isn't Bernie Madoff behind bars?

Why hasn't Congress thrown Roland Burris out of the Senate on his lying ass?

Why hasn't Fitzgerald reeled in Blago yet, instead of letting him run around giving interviews and signing book contracts?

Why hasn't the Attorney General Holder filed scores of civil recovery actions to reclaim for taxpayers the billions in excess salary and bonuses pocketed by the people who lost/squandered the life savings of millions of Americans?

Why hasn't Congress or the administration introduced and passed legislation requiring the above?

Why haven't Wall Street wheeler dealers who got us into this mess been fired and/or indicted instead of bailed out?

Why is it that only ordinary citizens are feeling the full impact of the chaos these movers and shakers caused?

In short, why are the very people whose actions ignited a worldwide depression still sitting pretty, at least compared to their victims? (That would now include taxpayers.)

I don't know about you, but I want the administration and Congress to do two things at once; start repairing the damage cause by hurricane Bush, and punish the few -- maybe as few as 100 -- individuals, like Mazillo, Madoff, Sanford et al, who aided, abetted and profited at the expense of everyone else. Because if we just clean up the mess and don't also make an example of the people who caused it, we'll be cleaning up another mess in few years. I know this is true because this is the third financial meltdown I've covered in less than 25 years.. 1) The S&L mess, 2) The Dot-Com mess, and 3) Now this one.

Each had the same things in common, including some of the very same actors; loose to non-existent regulations and/or enforcement, phony-baloney accounting methods that allowed a handful of bankers, borrowers, Wall Street firms and accounting firms to pocket billions, all of which eventually collapsed under the weight of it's own bullshit costing average investors and average taxpayers billions.... and this time around, trillions of dollars.

As they used to say in the old west, there's nothing like a noose to focus one's attention.

The Rant List
By GAIL COLLINS
I am having a tough time dealing with news that the former president of Countrywide Financial, the mortgage company that did so much to dig the hole in which we all now reside, is making a killing buying up delinquent mortgage loans from the government at bargain basement rates.

“It’s like Jeffrey Dahmer selling body parts to a clinic,” sniped one of my friends.

 

As Eric Lipton reported in The Times, Stanford Kurland, who was president of Countrywide during the years when it was selling mortgages with temporary low “teaser” rates that later turned into permanent unaffordable ones, now leads Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company, known to its friends as PennyMac.

In what one company official said was “off-the-charts good” business, PennyMac buys troubled mortgages from the government (which got them from failed banks) at rates like 38 cents on the dollar. Then it offers the beleaguered homeowners a chance to refinance at far more favorable terms. PennyMac makes money, the homeowner gets an affordable mortgage and the government gets a share of the profit.

Everybody’s happy! Except, of course, those of us who helped come up with the other 62 cents on the dollar.

More...

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