Mary Bottari's blog

Last week’s SEC action against Goldman Sachs landed like a bombshell on Wall Street. To the titans of Wall Street it must have seemed like the nice little kitty they had been stroking and cuddling over the years, viciously sank in teeth and claws.

One of the most salient analogies of the financial meltdown was offered by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission chair Phil Angelides when he grilled Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, over the firm’s unsavory proprietary trading. Angelides was questioning Goldman’s practice of minting toxic mortgage-backed securities and badgering credit-rating companies for the highest rating for those securities, while betting in the market that those securities would later fail.

Foreclosure filings were at historic highs in March -- 367,056 -- an increase of nearly 19 percent from the previous month, and the highest monthly total since 2005, according to RealtyTrac. Almost two years after the onset of the financial crisis with unemployment at historic highs, nothing is being done to put a stop to this on-going tragedy.

By Tiffiniy Cheng

When the big banks were about to go under, Congress was quick to give them all the money they could ever ask for. But now that millions of Americans have been put out of work by the crisis that the big banks caused, Congress can't seem to find the will to throw them a lifeline.

Last week, in the middle of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s testimony in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), the lights went out.

If you, like me, will be scrambling to complete your taxes this weekend, and feeling a bit disgruntled about being taxed more than the big boys on Wall Street, Jobs with Justice has a great plan on how to work out your angst.

Jobs with Justice, the feisty union representing workers in 25 states, is calling for a “Tax Wall Street” day of action on April 15th.

Almost every day, I read in the paper that the goverment is making money off of the bank bailout. Papers love good news, even if it is has little to do with reality. Today, the Financial Times reported that the U.S. made $10 billion off bank repayments on the bailout funds. $10 billion, hooray! We are in the black!

After an exhausting week, I was sticking to my usual routine of collapsing on the couch and tuning in to Bill Moyers Journal on PBS last Friday night. I was excited that one of the guests was Bryan Stevenson, the head of the Equal Justice Initiative, who has long been a hero of mine for his uncompromising, long-term battle against the death penalty.

TALLY SHOWS THAT THE FEDERAL RESERVE IS THE REAL SOURCE OF BAILOUT FUNDS

Today, the Real Economy Project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released an assessment of the total cost to taxpayers of the Wall Street bailout. CMD concludes that multiple federal agencies have disbursed $4.6 trillion dollars in supporting the financial sector since the meltdown in 2007-2008. Of that, $2 trillion is still outstanding.

CMD’s assessment demonstrates that while the press has focused its attention on the $700 billion TARP bill passed by Congress, the Federal Reserve has provided by far the bulk of the funding for the bailout in the form of loans amounting to $3.8 trillion.

Bernie Madoff is lonely. Eighteen months after the collapse of the financial system, not one Wall Street Titan has joined the Ponzi King in the federal pen.