Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Hmmm - these claims about Senators having been threatened by martial law if they refused to sign the Wall Street bailout bill have been bubbling away for some time, but Sen James Inhofe has just added some meat to the bone:

"Looting America: Treasury Secretary Paulson Threatened Senators with Martial LawTuesday, December 2, 2008, 9:04 am, by cmartenson
Some people think of Hank Paulson as our Treasury Secretary. I think of him as a 19 year veteran of Wall Street banking.

At every turn of this entire bailout he has specifically advantaged banks over taxpayers, banks over industry, banks over homeowners, and banks over the future health and prosperity of this country.

Is this surprising for a banking veteran? No, not really.

But the tactics he used certainly are. Consider this:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.) said yesterday that it was Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who personally told Congressmen that there would be martial law in America if they did not pass the bailout of the banks as demanded by the Bush Administration.

On Oct. 2, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said on the House floor that "Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no."

Now, Senator Inhofe, speaking on KFAQ radio station in Tulsa, has confirmed who it was that issued this threat.

The interview host Pat Campbell asked Infhofe, "Somebody in D.C. was feeding you guys quite a story prior to the bailout, a story that if we didn't do this we were going to see something on the scale of the depression, there were people talking about martial law being instituted, civil unrest. Who was feeding you guys this stuff?"

Inhofe replied, "That's Henry Paulson. We had a conference call early on, it was on a Friday I think--a week and half before the vote on Oct. 1. So it would have been ... the 19th of September, we had a conference call. In this conference call and I guess there's no reason for me not to repeat what he said, but he said, he painted this picture you just described. He said, This is serious. This is the most serious thing that we faced."

http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/looti...l-law/9576