Day: May 2, 2013

Jim Brown’s Weekly Column: Big banks want to stay to big to fail

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

BIG BANKS WANT TO STAY TOO BIG TO FAIL!

In the movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gecko summed up the attitude of major U.S. banks quite well: “Greed is good.” And this certainly appears to be true, at least for the banks, because after all, the federal government has made it clear that even after the 2008 financial debacle, where hundreds of billions’ of dollars were poured into the likes of these big guys, no effective new rules have been put into place and no major banker has been held accountable.

The old axiom is true. The more the big banks take irresponsible risks and commit out- right fraud, the more things stay the same, as the regulatory system looks the other way. That is until the banks face major losses and cry for help. Then the federal dollars begin to flow and bailout checks pour out of the federal treasury with the force of a flooding river.

Remember just five years ago? The big banks made off like bandits. J.P. Morgan Chase received $25 billion. Bank of America cashed in for $15 billion. Citigroup was the recipient of $25 billion, while both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley received $10 billion, each. With all this money being handed over by taxpayers, surely the rules of financial solvency and bank accountability would be overhauled. Too many risky investments and not enough money kept in reserve was the cry. Continue Reading………..

BrousStar sings his swan song for his old buddy Eric “Toolman” Paulsen

Gee Aaron I know a few months ago you put your hand on the bible and swore you committed multiple felonies but in your heart of hearts are you really guilty?

I do not begrudge WWL TeeVee airing BrousStar’s last performance (sans silly ear bandage) before he hits the Federal penitentiary, rather it was the attempted image makeover by Eric Paulsen, whose personal feelings for his long time friend in the former Goatherder in Chief ooze throughout the puff interview that I found offensive. It is pathetic to the point where everyone should watch it.

Paulsen’s puff interview makes for a nice compare and contrast with the interview Patsy Brumfield of the North East Mississippi Daily Journal conducted with Dick Scruggs last week, before he went back to prison. Brumfield is a respected print journalist in Mississippi media circles and there were no softball, “Gee Dick are you really guilty” type questions in her account of the interview Scruggs gave her no sir. One thing they did discuss is a part of the prison experience that certainly awaits the former Goatherder in Chief to which I previously alluded in the joyous transfer to a low security facility. Dick Scruggs explains via Patsy:

He spent much of his sentence in Ashland, but when his presence was required in Mississippi for court hearings, he experienced the prison system’s transit process on buses and planes through Oklahoma City and Atlanta.

While he said Oklahoma City’s prison wasn’t too bad, the worst was Atlanta – notoriously where Chicago mobster Al Capone spent some time.

Atlanta was “a hell hole” of filth, noise and 23-hour-per-day lockup where only the orderlies had any freedom because they were responsible for food delivery and cleanup, such as it was, Scruggs says. Continue reading “BrousStar sings his swan song for his old buddy Eric “Toolman” Paulsen”