Airlines: Bail us out… again!

When the CEOs of corporations are paid the same wages as the LOWEST paid employee of a company, THEN -and- ONLY THEN should their “bailout” requests be even remotely considered.

Bastards, all.

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WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chief executives of major U.S. airlines were reaching out to key members of Congress on Saturday in a last-ditch uphill effort to try to win cash grants to weather the coronavirus crisis, warning that

“Too Big To Fail” Banks Get Bailout, Gave Customers The Shaft

Update: Saturday, 20 February 2021
NOTE: TO THE READER: As you read any story mentioning, involving or written by Donald V. Watkins, Sr., it must be borne in mind that he is now a Federal Convict, and along with his son, Donald V. Watkins, Jr., was found guilty of numerous charges. “Donald Watkins Sr. was convicted of seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy. Donald Watkins Jr. was convicted of one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.” As of the date of this note, he is in Federal Custody at Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center, an administrative security facility, having been relocated away from the minimum security Federal Prison Camp on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

DONALD V. WATKINS
Register Number: 36223-001
Age:	72
Race:	Black
Sex:	Male
Located at: Oklahoma City FTC
Release Date: 01/10/2024

Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Alabama
FATHER AND SON SENTENCED TO PRISON IN MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENT FRAUD SCHEME
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/father-and-son-sentenced-prison-multimillion-dollar-investment-fraud-scheme

Here also is the SUPERSEDING INDICTMENT dated December 2018 entitled as:
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA SOUTHERN DIVISION, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD V. WATKINS, SR. and DONALD V. WATKINS, JR. – 2:18-cr-166-KOB-TMP
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1116081/download

See also: Donald Watkins, Son Sentenced For Federal Fraud Convictions
Updated Jul 16, 2019; Posted Jul 16, 2019
https://www.al.com/news/2019/07/donald-watkins-son-to-be-sentenced-for-federal-fraud-convictions.html

See also: Donald Watkins’ $1.5 Billion Question: Was It Ever Real?
Updated Feb 23, 2019; Posted Feb 23, 2019
https://www.al.com/news/2019/02/donald-watkins-15-billion-question-was-it-ever-real.html

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Chalk One Up for the Working Man

By Donald V. Watkins
©Copyrighted and Published (via Facebook) on December 18, 2016
Used with permission

On Thursday, I tried a case for a close friend on mine in the Jefferson County, Alabama District Court in Bessemer, Alabama. My friend is a hard working Bessemer resident and family man whose world was turned upside down when Citibank sold his credit card account to San Diego-based junk debt buyer, Midland Funding, LLC. He is one of millions of bank credit card customers each year whose accounts are bundled in loan pools and then sold to junk debt buyers without the customer’s knowledge.

Midland Funding is one of several mega junk debt buyers in America. This group of financial sharks buys unsecured bank debt for pennies on a dollar and then strong arms debtors who miss one or more of their monthly payments. Midland is part of a multi-billion industry of shady financial predators.

In my friend’s case, Citibank sold his account to Midland Funding. The balance on the account was $6,800. My friend paid his credit card monthly on a regular basis, but had an unexpected hiccup in his monthly cash flow a couple of years after he opened the account. As a result he failed to make a couple of his payments on time. When this occurred Citibank sold my friend’s account to Midland, and Midland eventually sued my friend. This is how my friend became my client.

Remember, Citibank had a similar hiccup during the Great Recession of 2008. The bank requested and received a total of $181.6 billion in federal bailout assistance to keep from collapsing. In fact, Citibank led the banking industry’s “welfare queens” by receiving more financial bailout assistance than any big bank in the U.S.

Citibank’s “Thank You” to the taxpayers like my client, whose tax dollars made the financial bailout possible for these big banks, was the low-down act of selling his credit card account to a shark like Midland Funding. The big banks were quick to take taxpayer-sponsored financial assistance, but slow to give taxpayers similar financial assistance in return.

[Editor’s Note: Alamerica Bank, which is

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Taxpayers Subsidize CEO Pay, Here’s How #BonusLoophole

Executive Excess 2016: The Wall Street CEO Bonus Loophole

This 23rd annual report reveals how taxpayers are subsidizing financial crisis windfalls.

By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, August 31, 2016

This report is the first to calculate how much taxpayers have been subsidizing executive bonuses at the nation’s largest banks.

The study focuses on a 1993 Clinton administration reform that was intended to rein in runaway CEO pay by capping the tax deductibility of executive compensation at $1 million. But the new rule included a huge loophole for stock options and other “performance” pay. As a result, the more corporations hand out in executive bonuses, the lower their tax bill. This perverse incentive for excessive compensation has been a major factor in the explosion of CEO pay.

The financial bailout program closed this loophole for recipients, but only until

The Oracle at Delphi: Mitt Romney’s direct tie to increased unemployment in North Alabama

The average reader may not be aware that there was once a huge Delphi plant in Limestone county, Alabama, which facility was located directly across from Calhoun Community College.

Mitt Romney owned a significant interest in a firm that profited by laying off workers, dumping their pensions, moving to China, and then profiting rapaciously from the TARP bailout. That large plant – one among many, with the largest one being in Alabama – was the Delphi Steering Gear facility in Tanner, near Decatur, in Limestone County.

It was one of North Alabama‘s LARGEST employers – with emphasis on “was.”

The men & women who made careers there, whose labors enabled their children to attend college, provided their families’ clothing, groceries, housing & healthcare, and provided for their own retirement, and which was a union shop, was shuttered several years ago.

Most of what news I recall about it centered around how corporate traders, not unions, were wanting even more & more profit when they were already profitable. Time and time again, the workers took cuts in benefits & pay to keep their jobs for as long as they could… all to no avail.

Like a gazelle savaged on the plains of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, that once prosperous plant has been laid to waste, and there are only industrial skeletal remains. Even the human buzzards, scavenging metal for recycling from the industrial carcass, have left. For many years now, the hollow exterior hulk, instead of employees, materials & labor, has been drawing cobwebs, dust & rust. And soon, like all things left unattended, it too will crumble.

There are no taxes paid to Limestone county, or to nearby Decatur, Athens or Huntsville, or to Alabama for roads, schools, police & fire protection. But there is an even greater issue, one which is exceedingly more weighty and sorrowful. As a result of it all, there is no hope, there are no jobs, and there is no future.

Here’s the even more disturbing part: Mitt Romney had his hand in that pie.

And yet the saddest and most perplexing part is, that most Alabamians will vote for the GOP nominee/candidate.

Following the economic investigative report are historical local news reports that show the progression about the issue (which validate the economic investigative report by Greg Palast), from the:
• Decatur Daily,
• Huntsville Times,
• Associated Press,
• Athens-Limestone News Courier,
• Saginaw News (via MLive.com), and
• Wall Street Journal,
dating 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 & 2010.

For the benefit of the reader, Greg Palast is an economist and financial investigator turned journalist whose series on vulture funds appeared on BBC Television’s Newsnight. He is the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin) and, most recently, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). For additional information about him, his website is: http://www.gregpalast.com.

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Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza

Greg Palast, October 17, 2012   |    This article appeared in the November 5, 2012 edition of The Nation.

This investigation was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and by the Puffin Foundation. Elements of it appear in Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). Research assistance by Zach D. Roberts, Ari Paul, Nader Atassi and Eric Wuestewald.

2012 GOP Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to TheWall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to theJournal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

* * *

Delphi, once the Delco unit of General Motors, was spun off into a separate company in 1999.

Taxpayers’ $182B TARP bailout of AIG Now Fully Recovered

As the president and others – nonpartisan and partisan alike – have noted, BIG BUSINESS should NOT need a bailout. They should be operated in such a manner as to allow the Free Market to decide how, to what extent, and if they prosper. As part of that process, ironclad and strong regulation to prevent fraud and abuse should be vigorously enforced. And chief executives

TARP: They got the Gold Mine, you got the shaft. -OR- Where’s MY f*ckin’ Bailout?

Surely this doesn’t surprise anyone.

The expressed sentiment of many American citizens.

There were voices decrying bailing out WALL STREET STOCK BROKERAGE HOUSES, BIG INSURANCE, BIG BUSINESS, “TOO BIG TO FAIL” BANKS, to the disadvantage of the American people.

From one perspective, TARP was a “good deal” because most of the money loaned has been repaid on time.

However, from another perspective (or two), the people (who make the economy run) were NOT “bailed out” and continue to suffer. That is, the objective (economic recovery) did not occur – at least to the extent it was hoped would occur. And their input into the economy continues to be abysmal, which in turn means that our national economy at large remains significantly unrecovered.

There are some who argue that the “bailout money” should have gone directly into the hands & pockets of American citizens & consumers because their spending would have stimulated the economy.

However, as it has been, the “bailout money” has gone to WALL STREET STOCK BROKERAGE HOUSES, BIG INSURANCE, BIG BUSINESS, “TOO BIG TO FAIL” BANKS, and the results have been – to put it politely – less then stellar.

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Behind the scenes of the bank bailouts

Tess Vigeland: It’s been almost four years since Lehman Brothers went under and the world’s financial system started to spin out of control. The fall of 2008 was all about Henry Paulson‘s bazooka, the Troubled Asset Relief Program — TARP — a $700 billion bailout for the banks. The bailout legislation created a special inspector general at the Treasury Department to oversee where all that money was going.

Neil Barofsky performed the job until he resigned early in 2011. Now he’s out with a tell-all book of his experiences in Washington, including the time he was pretty sure Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was about to haul off and punch him. It’s called

Was the Wall Street Bailout Socialist?

Having viewed an interview on MSNBC by Martin Bashir with Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I was taken with a question Mr. Bashir asked Sen. Sanders toward the conclusion of the interview.

Martin Bashir: Mr. Sanders, how is it possible that people like Eric Cantor appear to encourage capitalism for everyone until a bank fails, and then socialism is acceptable because ‘we have to bail out the banks… we have to support them.’ But all of us – individual citizens in this society – well, if capitalism swipes us aside, we have to accept that?

Because it’s always good to be certain, I doubled checked a couple resources to be certain of what I was hearing.

Here’s what I found:

BMW Tapped $3.6 Billion in Federal Reserve Funds During Financial Crisis

BMW Headquarters, Munich, Germany - Image via Wikipedia

By Chris Reiter – Dec 2, 2010

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s largest maker of luxury cars, secured funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve during the financial crisis to boost liquidity as other sources dried up.

BMW’s largest transaction under the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility was for $3.62 billion on Jan. 30, 2009, according to data released yesterday. BMW made “intermittent” use of the Fed program for refinancing at a time when other forms of credit were frozen, Mathias Schmidt, a spokesman for the Munich-based automaker, said today.

“We tapped into this program in 2008 and 2009 during the financial crisis

You Wall Street Mother Fucking Sons of Bitches!

Brian Williams has reported Thursday, December 17, 2009 on the NBC Nightly News that,

“New York state finance officials said today Wall Street is on track to shatter all profitability records this year.

Profits came in at just under FIFTY BILLION dollars

– that’s profit for the first three quarters of 2009 –

and that is much more than was expected for the entire year,

and a stunning TWO-AND-A-HALF times more than the previous record set back in the year 2000.

Bonus payments for bankers and traders could be as much as FORTY percent HIGHER than last year.”

Download the New York State Comptroller‘s report – Review of the Financial Plan of the City of New York, December 2009,  Report 16-2010, by Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State Comptroller –  here:

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt16-2010.pdf

See NBC Nightly News video here:

http://www.videonewslive.com/view/404951/video_wall_street_sees_recordbreaking_profits

-AND-

here:

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/wall-street-sees-record-breaking-profits/60a1dyr