Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[Peter Lemkin]

Krugman: "The Question Is Whether Our Economy Is Governed By Any Kind Of Rule Of Law"

Submitted by George Washington on 10/15/2010 16:26 -0500

Ben Bernanke Capital Formation CRAP Fail James Galbraith Krugman Obama Administration Too Big To Fail Wall Street Journal

→ Washington’s Blog

Paul Krugman writes:
The mortgage mess is making nonsense of claims that we have effective contract enforcement — in fact, the question is whether our economy is governed by any kind of rule of law.

***


True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks, like a temporary moratorium on foreclosures while some of the issues are resolved. Instead, it is asking the banks, very nicely, to behave better and clean up their act. I mean, that’s worked so well in the past, right?



The response from the right is, however, even worse .... conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.

I'm happy that someone as prominent as Krugman is weighing in on the side of the rule of law.

I've been banging on this drum for years:
Fraud Finally Being Discussed in Polite Company ... Now Where Are the Prosecutions?
A Free Market Is Not Possible Without Strong Laws Against Fraud
The Economy Will Not Recover Until The Perpetrators Of Our Crises Are Held Accountable
Economist James Galbraith: Economists Should Move into the Background, and "Criminologists to the Forefront"
Senior S&L Regulator Says Government Engaging in Massive Cover-Up of Economic Crisis: “The Entire Strategy Is to Keep People from Getting the Facts”
No Wonder the Economy Isn't Improving
The Root of the Economic Crisis: Dishonesty

Karl Denninger makes a similar point today:

Charles Hugh Smith [writes]:

Either there is due process of law or you have a kleptocracy/"banana republic" oligarchy. At present, that is the decision we face as a nation. If the banking Elites and their partners in the Central State (Fed and Treasury) are allowed to "win" and gut the property laws of the states, then the U.S.A. will be revealed as a kleptocracy/"banana republic" oligarchy.



If state laws are upheld, then the "too big to fail" banks are insolvent and they will fail. Then the question of kleptocracy arises once again: will the banks be allowed to fail as per Classic Capitalism, that is, their owners and managers will have to absorb the losses of that bankruptcy/failure, or will the Central State use its powers to collect taxes and cover the private losses of the Bank/Financial Power Elites? Privatizing profits and socializing losses has been the entire game plan since the global house of cards collapsed in 2008.



It's decision time, citizens. Either the banks/Central State "win" and we are a kleptocracy/ "banana republic," or they lose and the U.S. mortgage/ banking sector implodes and is either formally socialized (i.e. owned lock, stock and barrel by the Central State) or rebuilt from scratch without big banks, Federal guarantees and the Fed's incestuous interventions. ("We create the credit that enables the mortgage, you issue the mortgage, and then we buy the mortgage.")

There is no "fix" or half-measure that can patch this over now.

Yep.



The bottom line now is that Bernanke thinks he can continue to paper over this crap with yet more "QE" and other monetary games. He's wrong. All he's done, along with Greenspan, is enable not just bad behavior but outright lawlessness, while at the same time savers, senior citizens and those on fixed incomes are seeing their mandatory spending soar, destroying their savings. Instead of using his regulatory power to put a stop to it, he feeds the bankster criminals that in their drug-induced mania have trashed our nation with yet another shot of heroin laced with meth, empowering yet another wilding binge of destruction.



Every time Bernanke speaks he talks about "more credit." But we're here because instead of capital formation we have shifted to relying on "more credit." Credit, however, is debt. Those policies great for the debt merchant, including of course The Fed, but highly-destructive to the capitalist who is trying to provide a good or service into the economy. He is slowly asset-stripped by the banksters through his reliance on these mechanisms, where he should be relying on asset accumulation - that is, capital formation.



By destroying capital formation Bernanke both destroys those on fixed incomes and savers through intentional devaluation of their asset base and wrecks the structures that are necessary for productive investment and economic stability, say much less growth.



In a very real sense, Bernanke is throwing Granny and Grandpa down the stairs - on purpose. He is literally threatening those at the lower end of the economic strata, along with all who are retired, with starvation and death, and in a just nation where the rule of law controlled instead of being abused by the kleptocrats he would be facing charges of Seditious Conspiracy, as his policies will inevitably lead to the destruction of our republic.
We're at a crossroads folks. Either the rule of law is restored and the games stopped, with the removal from positions of power of those who have enabled the scams and frauds and the fraudsters themselves put out of business and jailed, or the spiral will tighten and the pressure build [with more and more] capital flight and destruction of final demand ....