Is that a whiteysphere whine I hear, after the train's left the station? The financial sector bailouts have been done or the final cash distributions are being firmed up, and the economy is definitely gonna be trashed. And, yeah, a few bloggers and Wall Street stock traders are waking up to exactly who the U.S. economy is going into bankruptcy to prop up, but what good does it do now? The dribbling out revelations come too late, and hell we're still (will it always be thus?) in couch potato, passive/aggressive `on-line activism' mode (!!Yay Team!! Go Go!!).

Nothing more in the present and future tense, the realistic whiteysphere bloggers are in schoolmarm coulda/shoulda mode (emphasis added):

The Feds' Bailout Black Hole
Bailouts Are Hard To End - One Reason Not to Start Them
March 4, 2009
by Declan McCullagh

. . . A bankruptcy judge could have carved AIG up into chunks with sound components separated from unsound ones. Other companies would buy assets that had value. Shareholders would likely have emerged in better shape than they have after AIG's stock price fell from over $70 to 43 cents in a two-year period.

"Suppose AIG goes bankrupt, it is better that AIG goes bankrupt and we have a horrible two or three years than that the whole US goes bankrupt," legendary investor Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros, told CNBC on Tuesday. "AIG has trillions of dollars of obligations, let them fail, let the courts sort it out and start over. Otherwise we'll never start over."

One aspect of the repeated AIG bailouts that deserves additional public scrutiny is how they enriched some of the company's counterparties at taxpayer's expense.

Those are the bailout's indirect beneficiaries, and they reportedly include Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS AG, and Deutsche Bank AG. They knew there were risks to dealing with AIG; the financial world would not end if AIG defaulted. . . .

The fantasy-based, mindless, attempted bailout of CDS (credit default swap) debt is emblematic of how empty, how out of ideas, Geithner et al are. AIG and all the others can't and won't cover their CDS debt. It won't happen. And there's nothing wrong with that, if you have a little imagination. We have to stop killing our economy to help them do that.

But, apparently, Geithner, Summers, and Bernanke are on automatic pilot, like some space odyssey 2009 bad Hal imitation: THERE IS, NO ALTERNATIVE, M-M-MUST BAIL OUT FAT CATS, m-m-MUST B, #$%^*DOES NOT COMPUTE, DOES NOT COMPUTE ffffffzzzzzz@%@#llllllll%#!!!! . . .

The financial industry can't cover its CDS debts. So, the government -- THAT'S Y-O-U TIMMY, LARRY, BEN, BARACK -- needs urgently to declare CDS contracts illegal, caput, null, and void too. Say this when you do it: "The U.S. economy will not be crucified on a cross of Phil Gramm fool's gold!" THERE, end of huge problem, right? Well, not quite, we also need to make sure the U.S. government gets the most important players paid, the national banks of China and Japan, who we need to pretend the next round of bonds the U.S. issues is the good stuff. Reassurances need to be made, government in action again, 'kay guys? You do believe in government, don't you?

Anyway, the following is a nicely succinct key to understanding why us taxpayers are handing AIG so much bailout money. Simple, AIG will send most of that money straight on through to the exceptionally well-connected CDS players it has insured (emphasis added):

A trip down cow dung I mean memory lane . . .

October 7, 2008, 9:39 pm
Obama Says AIG Execs Should Be Punished for Spa Trip
Susan Davis reports from Nashville, Tenn., on the presidential debate.

Last week, as Wall Street crumbled, about 70 executives of American International Group rewarded themselves with a week at the St. Regis in Monarch Beach, Calif. -- and the $440,000 tab was a topic at tonight's presidential debate.

The AIG group ran up a bill that included $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa, according to a Washington Post report.

At tonight's presidential debate, Barack Obama said they should be fired and the cost of the trip should be reimbursed to the U.S. Treasury since the taxpayers are on the hook for the $85 billion bailout to save the ailing insurance giant.

"The Treasury should demand that money back and those executives should be fired," Obama said . . .

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/07 obama-says-aig-execs-should-be-punished -for-spa-trip?mod=googlenews_wsj

He got right on it and kicked some AIG ass when he became President, didn't Obama? Well, no, but he had his reasons, as even the New York Times is willing to reveal:

Where's the CNBC outrage? C'mon, why don't these fat cats get some tough love or whatever the right-wing radio nuts call it? Plenty of grist for outrage: these guys don't drive Cadillacs, but hell they take hunting parties to England on our dime.

Obama provides $30B more for AIG  
By Silla Brush  
03/02/09 10:13 AM [ET]  

The Obama administration moved on Monday to extend as much as $30 billion in new government money to support the teetering insurance firm American International Group (AIG).

The new funds come on top of three previous rounds of government help at a cost of $150 billion.

Time to remember last October's (taxpayers out $86,000) AIG jetset hunting party in dear 'ol England:

After receiving an emergency $85 billion loan in September and asking for $37.8 billion more weeks later (request: granted!) AIG's Sebastian Preil, Jeffrey Malkovsky, John Roberts and friends picked off partridges to their hearts' content outside of Salisbury, Wiltshire in October on the tax payer dime.

"The recession will go on until about 2011 but the shooting was great today and we are relaxing fine," the UK site News of the World quotes AIG Frankfurt manager Sebastian Preil quipping as he pulverized French red leg partridges at the Stoke Drove shoot. "We have been given $85 billion from the US bank to help us out but we should be on an even keel in two years."

Yeah, right . . .

It's nice when a U.S. Secretary of State gets pissed off at and does something about the flagrant inhumanity of the main recipient of U.S. foreign and military aid, Israel:

Clinton warns Israel over delays in Gaza aid  

By Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents  
February 27, 2009  

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has relayed messages to Israel in the past week expressing anger at obstacles Israel is placing to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A leading political source in Jerusalem noted that senior Clinton aides have made it clear that the matter will be central to Clinton's planned visit to Israel next Tuesday.

Ahead of Clinton's visit, special U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is expected to issue a sharply worded protest on the same matter when he arrives here Thursday.

"Israel is not making enough effort to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza," senior U.S. officials told Israeli counterparts last week, and reiterated Washington's view by saying that "the U.S. expects Israel to meet its commitments on this matter."

Two weeks ago, four senior European Union officials sent a letter to the prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister and Yitzhak Herzog, the minister charged with humanitarian aid transfers to the Gaza Strip, protesting delays in the flow of aid through the crossings into Gaza. . . .

Now don't back down girl! Of course, the Israel Lobby quickly responded (and reported; WCBS doesn't allow readers to know what Clinton said that made seemingly 'everyone' so angry):

What a great progressive President we have, rescuing Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, simply with his inspiring words and $750 billion dollars of our money.

U.S. Stocks Advance as Obama Budget Asks for More Bailout Funds

By Lynn Thomasson

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks rose, recouping yesterday's losses, after President Barack Obama's budget proposed as much as $750 billion in new aid for the financial industry.

Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. gained at least 7 percent. . . .

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House hasn't decided whether the $750 billion in additional aid will be needed. He said it will be put in the budget as "placeholder."

Citigroup, the New York-based bank bailed out by the U.S. for $52 billion, rallied 7.1 percent to $2.70. Bank of America jumped 8.3 percent to $5.59. Wells Fargo added 8.3 percent to $14.56. . . .

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2 0601087&sid=aaqFirx20SzU&refer=h ome

Because, in the words of Sean Penn, Barack Obama is an elegant President.

`Nuff said.

You want more?

Well, and I'm sure Sean would agree, because Obama's wife Michelle is an elegant first lady.

`Nuff said.

You want still more?

The frustration of Obama's natural Hooverism is excruciating. I realize why Obama and Summers are incapable of acting on the glaring lessons of economic history but still, if we don't do so it will be so painful for nearly all of us. Very soon, for you, for your aging mom and dad.

Well, it won't be painful for the elite, not for Michelle, Barack, not for Penny Pritzker or Pete Peterson, but for all of us who needed -- and I mean needed -- their soon-to-be shredded Social Security (yup, that's the plan) and Medicare/Medicaid (yup that's the plan too: "Obama said in January that the [fiscal deform] summit would have a special focus on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.").

And all for what? To bail out the biggest, most irresponsible banks. Read Ismael Hossein-Zadeh's column and weep again:

Faced with the financial meltdown of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that poured taxpayers' money into the coffers of the influential Wall Street banks in an effort to save them from bankruptcy. Like today's Bush/Obama administrations, the Hoover administration used the "too-big-to-fail" scare tactic in order to justify the costly looting of the national treasury. All it did, however, was to simply postpone the day of reckoning: almost all of the banks failed after nearly three years of extremely costly bailouts schemes.

In a similar fashion, when in the mid- to late-1990s major banks in Japan faced huge losses following the bursting of the real estate and loan-pushing bubble in that country, the Japanese government embarked on a costly rescue plan of the troubled banks in the hope of "creating liquidity" and "revitalizing credit markets." The results of the bailout plan have likewise been disastrous, a disaster that has come to be known as "Japan's lost decade."