Capitalism: A Love Story Page #11

and exotic insurance products.

This made it legal

to let Citicorp

merge with Travelers Group,

a deal valued

at $70 billion,

creating the world's

largest bank.

After leaving

the Clinton administration,

Rubin worked for Citigroup,

earning more than

$115 million.

Summers made

his money where?

Summers made his money

as a supposed consultant

and in giving speeches

at apparently, in some cases,

over $100,000 a pop.

Moore:
Summers also made $5.2 million

at his part-time job,

advising a hedge fund.

Where did Geithner work?

Geithner has been a failure

at pretty much everything

he's done in life.

Most of the institutions

that destroyed the economy

were under his direct

regulatory authority.

How did he get the job

as Treasury Secretary?

By completely

screwing up his job

as President of the Federal

Reserve Bank of New York.

That makes no sense.

Of course, it makes

perfect sense.

This is not

new to Washington.

People who will give you

the wrong answer

but the answer you want

are invaluable.

And they often get promoted

precisely because

they're willing to say

and do absurd things.

These are the people

that promised us

that financial deregulation

would make all of us rich.

And these are the people who

were personally made rich.

Moore:
lt was not surprising that

the rich wanted to get richer.

But now they had come up with

a new and brazen way to do it.

Just back a big truck up

to the Department of Treasury

and take $700 billion

of our tax money,

no questions asked.

l got Michael Moore here. You know who

Michael Moore is, don't you?

The film director.

He's filming me right now.

- l got my wife on the line.

- Oh, hi.

How are you doing?

Baron Hill from lndiana.

How are you, sir?

Good state.

- We're from Michigan you know?

- Yeah.

How did this

collapse happen?

l got home on a Friday, everything

was just fine in terms of the economy.

l call back after my plane

landed in lndiana

just to check in

with my office,

and all of a sudden we've

got this crisis on our hands

and that l'm gonna have to vote

when l come back Monday

for a multibillion-dollar bailout

of the financial industry.

The word that we got

was that if we did not act immediately

the economy would collapse,

no doubt about it.

l felt that

the announcement

of this crisis in September,

just a few weeks

before election,

was very suspicious.

This is when Congress

is the most nervous.

And l thought, ''Wait a minute.

What's going on here?

This is not normal.''

Moore:

The leadership of Congress

and the Bush administration

quickly held a series

of private meetings

with the titans

of Wall Street to figure out

just how much money

was needed to cover

all the bad bets

investors had made.

A deal was cut with Treasury

Secretary Henry Paulson,

the former CEO

of Goldman Sachs,

whose net worth was estimated

at $700 million

when he left Goldman

to go and run the Treasury Department.

l think we saw the best of

the United States of America

in the Speaker's

office tonight.

Moore:

The best of America?

Or did he mean

the best of Goldman Sachs?

The Treasury Department,

it's basically an arm

of Wall Street.

All the people in charge

were from Goldman Sachs.

We call it Government Goldman

in the modern era.

Moore:

That's because there were now numerous

former Goldman executives

inside the Bush Treasury Department,

as there were under Clinton.

They worked as powerful

lobbyists from the inside

to abolish

financial regulations

while we paid

their salaries.

Black:

Treasury Secretary Paulson--

he wasn't just randomly

at Goldman.

He was the guy at Goldman

who got them big time

into buying these exotic

housing derivatives.

So he got Goldman in

a huge amount of trouble.

Moore:

lnsane housing derivatives

had now destroyed much

of Goldman's competition.

And with the Goldman boys

now calling the shots

inside the government,

they would ensure that Goldman

would end up as the kings

of Wall Street

when the dust settled.

Black:

So the last possible people

that should be giving advice

to Treasury would be Goldman.

So naturally Paulson,

former CEO of Goldman,

puts them on.

And what advice do they

end up giving?

Well, to use the taxpayers

to bail out Goldman

and other favored financial

institutions.

Well, Secretary Paulson

has submitted

a simple proposal

to Congress.

This is it--

three pages.

lt's about

$1 billion a word.

And it is quite simple.

Secretary Paulson gets

the key to the treasury.

He's gonna start off

by borrowing $700 billion

in the name

of the American people,

maybe more later.

And it waives all laws.

All laws!

Not even court review.

Pretty simple proposal.

We are in a real

crisis situation

that could mushroom

into something worse

than the Great Depression.

So l saw fear.

One gentleman started to cry.

People are telling us

that it's going to be this gigantic calamity.

And l'm up for election

in two months.

Eight weeks away

from election,

l don't want to make a mistake.

What's the right thing to do?

Heaven help us.

lf we fail to pass this

l fear the worst

is yet to come.

And a few members

were even told

that there would be martial law

in America if we voted no.

They were ramming this

thing down our throat.

They wanted us to vote on it

right away

without any kind of

thoughtful analysis.

- No real hearings?

- No real hearings.

And l wasn't about to--

l got cornered into voting

for the lraq resolution

based upon some lies

that they made to me and l wasn't going

to go through that again.

l will not wait on events

while danger is gathering.

l will not stand by as peril

draws closer and closer.

Use fear and then you

get done what you want.

And they created

in this window--

two months before election--

this pressure cooker.

People understand that

the House of Representatives

needs to pass this piece

of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, my message

to the American people...

don't let Congress

seal this Wall Street deal.

These criminals have

so much political power

they can shut down the normal

legislative process

of the highest lawmaking

body in this land.

All the committees

that should be scanning

every word of what is being

negotiated are benched.

And that means the American

people are benched too.

We are constitutionally sworn

to protect and defend

this republic

against all enemies

foreign and domestic.

They say it's gonna be

Y2K all over again.

This is the same politics

of fear we are hearing

from the fat-cat financial

bullies from Wall Street.

Why aren't we asking Wall Street

to clean up its own mess?

Why aren't we helping

American families faced with bankruptcy?

Why aren't we reducing debts

from Main Street instead of Wall Street?

ls this the United States Congress

or the board of directors

of Goldman Sachs?

Moore:

The night before the vote

the American people

in unprecedented numbers

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