The Revolving Door Spins Again as Eric Holder Returns to Gig at White Shoe Law Firm

Former Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t out of work for very long. He has now - like so many others who have undermined American democracy in the imperial Washington sewer - passed back through that gold-plated revolving door between government and the private sector. Mr. Holder, who turned over his duties of giving away get out of jail free cards to Wall Street looters to Loretta Lynch in May, has returned to the same white shoe law firm where he worked prior to heading up the Justice Department as the nation's top law enforcement official.

As reported by the website The Intercept in the story “Eric Holder Returns As Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks”:

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.

The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.

Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters.

The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report.

The Obama regime has had several of the figures who bailed out the banksters at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer quit their public gigs only to cash in big after a brief period by taking jobs in the same industry - an enormous betrayal of the American people. There was former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who scored two jobs with firms that benefitted from his management of the printing presses. 

Helicopter Ben nailed down gigs with bond firm Pimco as well as hedge fund Citadel and his Quantitative Easing programs have inflated the largest stock market bubble in history - one that is inevitably going to burst but probably not until Obama has joined Holder on the golf course. Then there is former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitnher who ended up at private equity firm Warburg Pincus and departed Press Secretary Robert Gibbs who scored a position with McDonalds along with many others of a lesser profile.

The conflict of interest is stunning but predictable for a rat and longtime fixer like Holder. It would have been nice had he at least waited for a few months but the stench of impropriety is so thick in the D.C. air that it isn't even noticed anymore. This is a very serious breach of the public trust for Holder who was in the position to act on behalf of all Americans who got ripped off by these big banks but unethical Eric had all of their backs. With the news that he is officially back on their team now it is pretty evident why there were no meaningful prosecutions of the Wall Street racketeers.

Escape Velocity: DJIA 16,000 +

It is a glorious feeling of American euphoria today on Wall Street and in the luxurious confines of the looter class. Pigs are flying as the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared above 16,000 today for the first time in the history of the index. Not that this is really any sort of a true economic barometer of our days prior to collapse but it is what the shills, presstites and state-corporate media are given to push as an indication of a vibrant and resurgent American economy. Pumping 85 billion a month into the now bigger than ever banks thanks to the squadrons of helicopters on constant altert courtesy of Chairman Ben Bernanke and his onerous Federal Reserve, an institution that exists only to ensure that the high-rollers will never have to eat their speculative losses. The cooked to a fine fricassee markets have been in hyperdrive since last week’s command performance by Bernanke successor Janet Yellen who promises to keep the punchbowl filled with booze and the easy money that provides the heroin fix to the junkie banks flowing into the grand New York City gambling houses.

Things are so good that even Turbotax Tim Geitner just landed a new gig over at Warburg Pincus, yet another of those parasitic private equity houses that specialize in vulture capitalism or more appropriately sucking the blood out of the busted out average American and then picking the last morsels of flesh from their bones. The ongoing economic gaming of the system now enters the next stage and Yellen’s coming escalation of the QEuphoria is going to make Bernanke look like Paul Volcker by the time she is done feeding the pigs and inflating the Fed’s balance sheet to astronomical proportions. With the sweet, sweet spike now intravenously and permanently inserted into the arm of the zombie banks the final crushing of the remnants of our once vibrant middle class, at one time the envy of the world is about to be snuffed out for good. While I was driving home this evening I noticed that gas prices have jumped 26 cents a gallon overnight so the speculative feeding frenzy is already on and there is nothing like four dollar per gallon plus right in time for the holiday season to stomp the jackboot of the corrupt bankster state down on the windpipe of a reeling country.

Barack Obama now will also go down in history as the president who finally destroyed American capitalism, not that his immediate predecessors don’t have their own fingerprints on the murder weapon. Whether it be Bush’s maxing the national credit card with costly and unnecessary wars or Slick Willie’s collusion with slimeballs like Robert Rubin to eliminate the Glass-Steagall act and tear down the firewall between actual honest commercial banking and immoral degenerate gambling it is a joint effort. Hell, even the sainted Reagan bears more than his share of the blame for the orgy of deregulation that was just bound to be hijacked by greedy, well-funded special interests who while preaching “free markets” were ensuring that the rules would be rigged so that the only thing “free” would be the boatloads of illicit money that the pigs would eventually extract by permanently fixing the markets. 

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman caught hell from both sides of our false paradigm of a two-party system when he wrote the scathing piece “Sundown in America” in the New York Times. His book The Great Deformation is an extended version of the article that earned him the scorn of the presstitutes and the elitist defenders of a system gone to rot. The Bircher element of the far-right has always pushed the Obama as Marxist whopper when the man is actually by virtue of the system he presides over a fascist and Marx could have never dreamed of nuking capitalism the way that Barry and the boys have with their ongoing government subsidizing of the markets at taxpayer expense. To give Marx a bit of credit capitalism always has held within itself the seeds of its own eventual destruction in that everything becomes commoditized and all is for sale, including government officials, judges, statehouses, universities, the media etc. In the past most of the looting was done abroad as the imperialist policies of this country plundered with aplomb and the big money had the U.S. military on call. Former United States Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler nailed it when early in the last century he proclaimed:

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Now the chickens have come home to roost and with foreign lands plundered and occupied the strip mining of America itself began. I have always thought of the analogy of the old Stephen King short story “Survivor Type” as a wonderful metaphor for cancerous vulture capitalism of the type that now exists. In the tale a dude finds himself marooned on a barren Pacific island after a shipwreck. The character is a former surgeon who was involved in drug trafficking and had in his possession a huge cache of heroin (we keep coming back to this substance when discussing Wall Street banks for some reason) and no food. During the story he begins imbibing the drug and eventually has to start slicing off parts of his own body which he then eats in order to survive while he awaits rescue. This is what American capitalism is today, the politically connected corrupt classes have destroyed free enterprise and the spirit of being the best at what you do/produce. In short the pigs have broken the back of American entrepreneurial ladders into the upper class and turned the American dream into a nightmare.

Today’s 16,000 Dow record will be trumpeted by the house shills and the crooked court jesters like Mad Money Jim Cramer but it is all a lie, just like everything else in this debased land as it careens towards the inevitable final collapse. Not that I am any sort of a qualified financial consultant but it doesn’t take an Harvard doctorate in economics to see that the best investment for the near future is in canned goods.

I don't know just where I'm going…But I'm goin' to try for the kingdom if I can…Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man…When I put a spike into my vein…Then I tell you things aren't quite the same…When I'm rushing on my run…And I feel just like Jesus' son….And I guess I just don't know…And I guess that I just don't know

- “Heroin” by Lou Reed 1972-2013

Wall Street Casinos Jubilant as Bipartisan Deal Looms

To the moon Alice! The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed up 323 points on Thursday as the imminent bipartisan effort to preserve the ongoing government subsidizing of America’s great gambling casinos on Wall Street was locked and loaded. In a much hyped meeting  between Obama and Republicans an agreement to kick the debt ceiling can down the road to allow for “negotiations” and postpone the cancelling of the maxed out national credit card sent the crack ho markets soaring. The jubilation on 'the street' is a celebration of more of the same brand of crony capitalism, rigged financial markets that are unable to function without a constant stream of government supplied heroin in the form of free gambling money and QEuphoria got their latest fix. As of market closing time on Friday, the DJIA was up another 111 and change as the negotiations between Barry and the congressional mob wasn't fully consummated although the lights had been dimmed, the sheets turned down and the tube of KY jelly parked upon the nightstand. This thing is just about over and the only ones who will be screwed - again - will be the regular American peasants who don't have the ability to buy the juice in Washington like the big boys do.

Today's White House dog and pony show had the added attraction of the presence of the Texas Zamboni aka Senator Ted Cruz, the Harvard educated former Supreme Court clerk elitist turned cultural populist with a snake handler for a daddy and an eye on a his own gig at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  The state media reveled in the presence of the oily Cruz and his confrontational digs at El Presidente and the biggest media whore to emerge since John McCain basked in the press attention. Cruz was tolerated like an unruly and petulant child is but when it came down to it the deal cutting was being done by the de facto lobbyists executing their marching orders to keep the government gravy train running efficiently when it comes to preserving the inflated markets. There will be a deal in the very near future, that ridiculous October 17th deadline that was hyped incessantly by the presstitutes was always bullshit and anyone with any common sense understood it.  Here in the Homeland, the "new normal" is government supported financial markets, the 'too big to fails' will never be allowed to simply go out of business as lousily run outfits would in a true capitalist environment. The big boys know very well that as George Carlin put it in his scathing and brilliant rant "the American Dream" put it - "the table is tilted... the game is rigged".  The propagandists in the corporate-state media will continue to sell the big lie of the triumphant American capitalist system but the troth is that the markets are totally dependent on free chips from the discount window. Yet another cramdown is coming for the peasants thanks to Barry and his corrupt administration wgi are at this very moment engaging in yet another sellout of America in favor of big money special interests. It must be getting close to Halloween because the ghost of Karl Marx is out and cackling hysterically at how the corrupt American system has vindicated his criticism of capitalism.

Oh but there was much sound and fury over the so-called tea party representatives refusing to cave on the debt ceiling but the big business hustlers, including the Koch Brothers were starting to sweat the implosion of the house of cards economy.  Then suddenly, like a burst of god’s own sunlight beaming down through the dark clouds of collapse a miraculous and serendipitous occurrence of bipartisanship arrived to save the day. Did you really believe that after over five years of shoveling house money extracted from the hides of the little people was going to be blown up by a pack of occasionally earnest but more often incurably useful idiots and their ‘principled’ stance against debt and the deviltry of Obamacare? Nope. Just like those other wonderful aspects of 21st century America - war, torture, domestic spying, building more prisons, rigging the laws to ensure that those for profit prisons are packed with revenue generating human flesh to keep the bribes flowing, propagandizing, censoring journalists and all of the rest of the cornucopia of fascist wonders that rose out of the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center the big con of the Wall Street Banks, their Federal Reserve and the traders and hedge fund hyenas will endure forever. There is zero way that the sitting government, or for that matter ANY of their bought and paid for successors are ever going to end the fleecing of America.

Combine that with the announcement that Janet Yellen would be replacing the esteemed Ben Bernanke at the Fed and inheriting command of the helicopter squadrons and an even bigger proponent of subsidizing the markets than Chairman Ben and it is Christmas in October for the pigs. But the average schmuck continues to get hammered in our star-spangled banana republic, the proper nickname of which should be the “Land of Fuck You, I Got Mine” and of which the national anthem, a homage to our dependent markets would be Lou Reed's "Heroin".

Freedom isn't free, unless of course you can afford to buy the government itself. Is this a great country or what?