According to Presidential candidate John McCain, the Treasury Department should “intervene aggressively to limit damage from the financial meltdown” by going to the Exchange Stabilization Fund to “purchase up to a trillion dollars in mortgages.”

This, he claims, could be accomplished by President Bush with the mere “stroke of a pen.”

Read that again: John McCain says we as taxpayers must surrender $1,000,000,000,000.00 to bail out the banks.

Keep that in mind as the following facts are reviewed.

The last time the Executive Branch looted the treasury and bypassed Congress was in the mid-1990s, when we were on the hook for a mere $50 billion. A proposal to prop up the Mexican peso via a bailout was floundering in Congress.

Many Americans were outraged and asked why they should foot the bill for Goldman Sachs and that narco-kleptocracy south of the border. Congress listened.

Getting nowhere, the Clinton administration thumbed its nose at the public and went directly to an obscure source called the Exchange Stabilization Fund, or ESF — the same entity McCain is urging the president to use — to prop up the peso. Of the total $50 billion package, some $20 billion were taken from the ESF fund. The ESF was designed (albeit unconstitutionally) to prop up the dollar. Now it was used to bail out a foreign economy.

What made the bailout all the more outrageous was the fact that Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin had been the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, which was heavily invested in Mexico. Rubin had been earning $26 million per year, plus his personal holdings at Goldman’s had been estimated at $100 million. Goldman’s clients in Mexico were partly responsible for Rubin’s financial position.

Mexico was about to default on those loans, which would have hurt Goldman, so somebody had to do something to prop up Mexico and protect the Establishment Wall Street banks.

This clear conflict of interest nary got a mention in the press.

Fast forward 14 years later.

According to Bill Gertz, in his new book The Failure Factory,

Before taking the Treasury post, Paulson made millions of dollars for Goldman Sachs in China, going on some seventy trips there in a decade and a half and concluding multiple deals with Chinese state-owned businesses. Yet no one in Congress bothered to question the president or his advisers as to whether placing someone with such vested interests in making money in China had a major conflict of interest….

Paulson’s pro-China credentials led conservative critics to dub him “China’s man in the Bush cabinet.” Former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney wrote that “Henry Paulson has been Communist China’s Armand Hammer,” comparing the Treasury secretary to the Western capitalist enlisted by the Soviet Union to serve as a financial adviser and agent of influence in Washington and other foreign capitals. Hammer and others like him were rewarded for their support with lucrative deals for energy and natural resources while being allowed to market their products exclusively in the evil empire. It was a deal with the devil that few in the West fully understood….

In 2006, Goldman Sachs bought into China’s biggest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for $2.58 billion, netting Paulson himself, as CEO, a personal stake worth a reported $25 million.

And as reported on Yahoo news a week ago,

Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs boss reportedly worth about $700 million, told Congress, "I share the outrage that people have. It's embarrassing for the United States of America."…

"What this is about is market confidence," he said. "It's a sad story, but the American taxpayer is already on the hook."

So why are Paulson and his associates so panicked? And why are we “on the hook”? China might supply us a clue.

On September 24, Reuters reported, “Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis….”

Gee, with China no longer willing to swap currencies and lend money to overextended banks, it’s now up to us as taxpayers to save their skins.

Yes, it’s a sad, such a sad, story. You and I must make sure that the billionaire banksters don’t lose their yachts, mansions, and floozies.

No, Secretary Paulson, the reality is that conflicts of interest abound everywhere we look, and the American people are fed up with being fleeced by the criminal syndicate of moneychangers, of which you are the water boy for this particular bailout.

Even Fox News has noted, “[L]egislation was highly unpopular with the public, ideological groups on the left and the right organized against it, and Bush no longer wielded the influence to leverage tough votes.”

That’s right, and they know it.

The banksters are not going to rest until they get their bailout. Tell your congressman that we, the American people, will not be tolerate a bailout for any amount. None. Zero. Zilch. No bailout at all.

And this time around, if the Bush administration takes its cue from its predecessor, and does in fact employ the same ESF tactic, we should demand that all of the individuals involved should be impeached and removed from office, and tried for any crimes committed in the process.

It’s long past time for the fleecing to stop — for good.

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