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[tom <tom AT honeychrome.com>]

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09292008.html

"....there was no guarantee that the banks would use the money in the  
way that Paulson imagines. As one Wall Street veteran explained to  
me, "I don't see one penny of that $700 billion ending up helping the  
broader economy. I see it being used to prop up share prices so the  
insiders can salvage as much as possible when dumping their shares".

Indeed, the $700 billion is just part of a massive "pump and dump"  
scheme engineered with the tacit approval of the US Treasury and the  
Federal Reserve. Once the banksters have offloaded their fraudulent  
securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they will do whatever they  
need to do pad the bottom line and drive their stocks up. That means  
they will shovel capital into hard assets, foreign currencies, gold,  
interest rate swaps, carry trade swindles, and Swiss bank accounts.  
The notion that they will recapitalize so they can provide loans to  
US consumers and businesses in a slumping economy is a pipedream. "