Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?
By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
In August 2009, John Mack, at the time still the CEO of Morgan Stanley, made an interesting life decision. Despite the fact that he was earning the comparatively low salary of just $800,000, and had refused to give himself a bonus in the midst of the financial crisis, Mack decided to buy himself a gorgeous piece of property — a 107-year-old limestone carriage house on the Upper East Side of New York, complete with an indoor 12-car garage, that had just been sold by the prestigious Mellon family for $13.5 million. Either Mack had plenty of cash on hand to close the deal, or he got some help from his wife, Christy, who apparently bought the house with him.
The Macks make for an interesting couple. John, a Lebanese-American nicknamed “Mack the Knife” for his legendary passion for firing people, has one of the most recognizable faces on Wall Street, physically resembling a crumpled, half-burned baked potato with a pair of overturned furry horseshoes for eyebrows. Christy is thin, blond and rich — a sort of still-awake Sunny von Bulow with hobbies. Her major philanthropic passion is endowments for alternative medicine, and she has attained the level of master at Reiki, the Japanese practice of “palm healing.” The only other notable fact on her public résumé is that her sister was married to Charlie Rose.
It’s hard to imagine a pair of people you would less want to hand a giant welfare check to — yet that’s exactly what the Fed did. Just two months before the Macks bought their fancy carriage house in Manhattan, Christy and her pal Susan launched their investment initiative called Waterfall TALF. Neither seems to have any experience whatsoever in finance, beyond Susan’s penchant for dabbling in thoroughbred racehorses. But with an upfront investment of $15 million, they quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.
Read article in full over at Rolling Stone here…
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4closureFraud.org
talk about disgusting hogs!
it is just so unreal— the corruption, the total annihilation of our society.
the fed is corrupt and has funded their cronies. we have been raped and pillaged.
bernanke and geithner need to resign–immediately.
THROW THESE BITCHES IN PRISON WHERE THEY BELONG. MAY THEIR ROTTEN CORRUPT SOULS ROT IN HELL .ALL OF THE HOMES, CARS, FUR COATS, AND JEWELRY IN THE WORLD CANNOT SAVE THEIR ROTTEN,CORRUPT SOULS. THEY ALL ROBBED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BLIND AND THEY STILL ARE. WHAT GOES AROUND,COMES AROUND AND KARMA IS A BITCH. RESCIND OUR FAKE MORTGAGE LOAN CONTRACTS. WE DO NOT OWE THESE SCUMS ANY MONEY BECA– USE OF THE PONZI SCHEME. GIVE BACK THE STOLEN TAX-PAYER FUNDED BAILOUT MONEY, THE 401K MONEY AND THE OTHER PENSION AND INVESTMENT MONEY THEY STOLE FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.. THE MONEY THESE FOREIGN CRIMINAL SHEISTERS STOLE FROM THE PEOPLE BY DECEPTION. THE FOREIGN OWNED NEW WORLD ORDER MULTINATIONAL BANKSTER/WALL STREET CRIME SYNDICATE STOLE THAT BAILOUT MONEY TO COVER UP FOR THE PONZI SCHEME ROBBERY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. GIVE BACK THE HOMES AND MONEY THAT YOU CRIMINALS STOLE FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY COMPLETELY INTENTIONAL CRIMINAL DECEPTION AND THEN GO DIRECTLY TO PRISON.
What are we going to do about it? Is it going to be business as usual?
Fat cats and Fat wives to match.I ask you could the FED get anymore stupid than this?