Blackrock Takes the Cake

You must know how many Washington insiders have migrated to the Blackrock "umbrella" over the years. Well today Marketwatch.com published a short story on their overwhelming influence handling the government sponsored cleanup of the financial bailouts and derivative mess created by the financial institutions "we" know own.

The story states some of the many roles Blackrock has been "hired" to take care of on behalf of the taxpayers who will be paying them and the labyrinth of conflicts that have resulted. For example the article states:

BlackRock was hired to manage the portfolios of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. . BlackRock also is responsible for valuing hard-to-price assets at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . It manages a $46 billion fund for the New York Fed that buys assets underlying credit-default swaps written by AIG, an assignment at the behest of the New York Fed.

This is only part of their many roles. The bottom line is how on earth can you have a company responsible for winding down collapsed financial institutions worthless derivatives on one hand then have them valuing assets many of the derivatives were written on the other hand and not expect them to "game" these two responsibilities to maximise the profits they could potentially make by "being" both sides of the market?

Our government is run by worthless weans who are clueless and impotent. Shame. We all will pay, only this time it will truly break our economy.