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Thursday 29 January 2009

Years ago, reporters for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are reporting this week, the FBI knew that home mortgage scams were being perpetrated by banks all across the country. They told the Bush Administration, and were denied agents or resources to pursue their cases. Two years ago then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer tried to prosecute banks - along with governors or attorneys general of all 50 states - for just these types of crimes and the Bush administration used an obscure Civil War era law to stop him. Today we learn that the very hustlers who helped destroy our economy, the so-called “investment bankers” at Morgan Stanley and AIG (who have gotten billions of our taxpayer dollars in the recent bailouts) will be getting their bonuses this year, to the tune of $1.13 million in cash for the 400 brokers at AIG. But while they should be denied their bonuses, the criminals for whom we should re-open Gitmo are Phil Gramm, John Boner, and the other Republicans who changed laws reaching back to the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s to prevent exactly these types of scams. Thom Hartmann

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