Corruption In The Financial Industry Demands Congressional Inquiry

Big Business loves Big Government. I am extremely disgusted by the greed of some of our financial captains. Most prominent is Bill Gross of Pimco, the largest bond management firm in the nation. His firm positioned themselves for the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then pleaded for such a bailout. He got what he wanted and Pimco no doubt made billions when they should have lost on this speculation. Congress should haul Mr. Gross before it and make him tell how much his firm made off this blatant taxpayer rip off. The disgusting scenario is neatly summarized by interest rate expert Mike Larson in this exerpt from his blog as follows: I highlighted Pimco fund manager Bill Gross’ comments last week in which he essentially begged for an even more aggressive government bailout. We now all know that within 48 hours, the biggest bailout in U.S. history was announced. What we also know is that as part of the bailout, the government is directly manipulating … er … intervening in the mortgage backed securities market to drive prices up and yields down. Who will pay for it? The Treasury, and by extension, us taxpayers… Anyway, back to Pimco. Before publicly urging the government to bail out the housing and mortgage markets…Mr. Gross (and his investment team) positioned Pimco’s Total Return Fund with 61% of its holdings in mortgage backed securities as of June 30… So in a nutshell — a huge bond fund manager buys up paper that would benefit from a taxpayer-funded government bailout … goes public with an aggressive “we need a bailout out now” pitch … gets his wish … and then openly admits that he wants to make money by dumping that paper back to the Treasury (read: taxpayers). Or in other words, he wants U.S. taxpayers to basically help his bond fund make money. Nice work if you can get it.