The Great Wealth Transfer of 2008

Q: Why did the government bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
A: Foreign governments held a poo-pot full of their debt, and were taking massive losses as the two careened toward failure. Foreign central banks began pressuring Hank Paulson, and he bailed them out. Not just Fannie and Freddie, but the foreign central banks. On the backs of the US taxpayer. Thus transferring our wealth to foreign central banks.

Q: Why did the government bail out AIG?
A: AIG had its tentacles in numerous other financial institutions abroad, many of them overseas. Foreign investors brought considerable pressure on Hank and his buddy Helicopter Ben, and they once again capitulated. Once again transferring wealth from the US taxpayer abroad.

This is akin to the bailout of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1998. The US economy was headed into recession that year. Then, in late summer, LTCM began to unwind. Foreign investors were into LTCM in a big way. They persuaded then-Fed chair Alan "Mr. Bubble" Greenspan to bail them out. So he did, cutting the Fed funds target by 75 basis points in six weeks, in an already accommodative monetary policy environment.

The result was the dot-com bubble. Money was so cheap that banks were giving it out like candy at a parade to every venture capital firm out there. They in turn handed it over to every dot-com guru who had a cute sock puppet for a mascot, but no earnings projections. Mr. Bubble himself greased the wheels for this "irrational exuberance," by saying that technology-led productivity advances would naturally contain inflation in this "new economy." Of course, he was wrong, though he won't admit it now.

The melt-down from the dot-com collapse led Mr. Bubble to slash interest rates to ridiculously low levels, and to hold them there for too daggone long. Which created the housing bubble.

Which is now responsible for the global financial hell that we're on the brink of.

Just give the the addresses of the central banks in question, and I'll eliminate the middle man and write them the check myself.