Marcy Kaptur: “It's no secret that Wall Street is rampant with cases of outright fraud, backroom deals and very, very special political…”

“It's no secret that Wall Street is rampant with cases of outright fraud, backroom deals and very, very special political access. Meanwhile, Main Street is pushing back hard against this tide by investing in our communities and struggling to create jobs so our economy can grow. A steady series of probing news stories have begun to expose the depth of corruption that precipitated the Wall Street meltdown and why it is so hard for Main Street to recover. Bloomberg just released a story detailing how the former Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, provided special insider information to well connected Wall Street executives in July of 2008, just before the meltdown. According to Bloomberg, on the very same day the former Secretary told The New York Times that he expected the examinations of the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would ``give a signal of confidence to the markets,'' he informed a select group of his friends on Wall Street later in the day that in reality, there was a plan for placing ``Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship,'' which amounts to a government seizure. Those firms got insider information, and one can ask, did they then place bets to protect their interests? I bet they did.…”