Our Money at Work

Matt Tiabbi strikes again regarding the complete corruption of our financial system with his piece titled 

Why is the Fed Bailing Out Qaddafi?

Barack Obama recently issued an executive order imposing a wave of sanctions against Libya, not only freezing Libyan assets, but barring Americans from having business dealings with Libyan banks.

So raise your hand if you knew that the United States has been extending billions of dollars in aid to Qaddafi and to the Central Bank of Libya, through a Libyan-owned subsidiary bank operating out of Bahrain. And raise your hand if you knew that, just a week or so after Obama’s executive order, the U.S. Treasury Department quietly issued an order exempting this and other Libyan-owned banks to continue operating without sanction.

But this is par for the course as seen by the 10 corporations who paid NO TAXES last year while receiving bailouts from the Fed. 

"Among those actually getting money back from the Feds: 

• ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009, paid no federal income taxes,  received a $156 million rebate.
• Bank of America received a $1.9 billion IRS refund despite $4.4 billion of profits,
• General Electric had $26 billion in profits, and $4.1 billion refund (GE made it onto another top 10 list of top corporate lobbyists in 2010, spending $39 million.)
• Chevron nabbed a $19 million refund after making $10 billion in profits.

Wall Street made the list as well; the Senator's office notes,"Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department."

Seems we, the middle class, foots the bill while paying taxes and getting screwed by the so called representatives who represent us but hey, according to the supremes, corporations are people, no?

"And so it goes." Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5