HISTORY CHANNEL EXECUTIVE

Great series on The History Channel this month: America; The Story of  US.

I have been watching these documentaries since I was six; especially those wonderful hours about WWII.

The hour on WWII in this series did not have anything particularly special except for good effects featuring some scenes from the few color films taken during the war. And there was a good emphasis upon the workers, male and female who actually risked their lives working in the war plants. I mean tens of thousands of workers died in factory accidents supporting our armed forces.

The only reason I bring it up is that the entire series is brought to us by BOA. During the WWII segment, you would not skip to commercial break exactly; instead you would just find yourself in the commercial without segue. Really clever and of course, it should be banned in all of our elementary schools.

During the twelve hour presentation:

Viewers might be momentarily confused when the screen goes dark, signaling a commercial break, only to light up again with men dressed in colonial garb on the cobblestone streets of Boston. The scene cuts to a bow-tied historian named K. C. Johnson, who tells an interviewer, "American colonies before the revolution existed for the economic good of the mother country," and then to another historian, Steve Gillon, who adds, "The British used money as a way of keeping the Americans down." Then, to a triumphant flourish of music, the Bank of America logo appears, along with the screen text, "Fueling progress, creating opportunity, building on our heritage."  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/business/media/06adco.html

And if you think that is bad, you should see them prove that BOA won WWII for us.

Shameless you might say. But geeeeeeeeeeeeez, how can you call anything shameless anymore when Glenn Beck can make fun of 11 year old girls  (Do you really think Glenn could win a battle of wits with a fifth grader?) and Liz Cheney can demand an investigation into the Obama Administration.

But back to good old BOA.

Bank of America (BAC: 15.739, 0, 0%) will receive $20 billion in additional bailout money from the U.S. government to help complete its merger with Merrill Lynch, the Treasury Department announced early Friday, in addition to a backstop on $118 billion of assets.

Shares of BofA plunged 18% on Thursday amid reports the bank might get these funds, which are in addition to the $25 billion of funds the bank has already received from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Plan.

Most of the $118 billion in assets being backstopped were inherited by BofA from Merrill Lynch, which it absorbed on Jan. 1. Those assets include securities backed by residential and commercial real estate loans, and Treasury said in a press release that they have all been marked to current market value. The portfolio includes $37 billion in cash assets and a derivatives portfolio that Treasury said has maximum future potential losses of  $81 billion.

Mother Jones really did not think that some of these events carried the proper odor..

Something here really doesn't add up. What happened in the final three weeks of December that could have caused such a massive change in Merrill's position? Those weeks were actually fairly quiet on the toxic waste front.

Not saying it couldn't happen, but there must be more to this story. Or, alternatively, it's just your standard Wall Street fuckup. I guess that's probably it.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, does anyone else remember that fawning piece about Ken Lewis and Bank of America that 60 Minutes aired last October? I wonder if Lesley Stahl feels embarrassed yet?

Yeah, and it all turned around. A month after the second payment to BOA from TARP funds, all the banks were doing so nicely they thought they should reward those who deserve it most:

Bank of America said this week it plans to spend $4 billion on its investment bankers, JPMorgan will hand out bonuses valued at $9.3 billion and Goldman set aside $16.2 billion for salaries, bonuses, benefits and other compensation costs, up 48% from 2008

TELL ME GREAT HERO, BUT PLEASE MAKE IT BRIEF

IS THERE A HOLE FOR ME TO GET SICK IN?

                                                                 B. Dylan

So lets all go back to the humble beginnings of BOA.

Well folks it all started in a 5000 watt station in San Bernadino--no that was the asshole on MTM.

Giannini, Amadeo P. (Peter) (1870-1949) banker; born in San Jose, Calif. Child of Italian immigrants, from 1883 to 1901 he worked in his stepfather's produce business; made a partner by 1889, he retired at age 31. His father-in-law died intestate (1902) and as manager of the estate he started the Bank of Italy (1904), primarily as a lender to small, underserved businesses; throughout his career he would continue to promote liberal loan policies. The bank soon began to expand to other cities in California and by 1918 he had developed the first statewide branch-banking system in the United States. He retired as president of the Bank of Italy in 1924 but remained active in its parent holding company, Transamerica Corporation. In 1930 he combined the Bank of Italy and others to establish the Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association, which survived the Depression to become by 1934 one of the world's largest commercial banks. During the Depression he was sometimes criticized for his bank's excessive holdings of farm mortgages, and was accused of encouraging the exploitation of migrant farm workers. By the time of his death, his Bank of America was the largest bank in the U.S.A. and the largest privately held bank in the world. In 1927 he donated $1.5 million to the University of California to establish the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics; after his death much of his fortune went to a foundation for medical research.  http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Giannini,+Amadeo+P.

Well, we have several problems here. I mean, BOA had nothing to do with the Colonists for one thing. It did not even show up on the radar until 1904 as the Bank of Italy.

So we know BOA never funded the Revolutionary War or the Civil War....

As a matter of fact, BOA is not really American at all. It is an international corporation that does not give one goddamn about US. Here is something from their own web site:

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has offices and operations in 25 countries and supports business in over 180 countries throughout the globe. Through special clearing arrangements, we offer treasury services in 52 countries.

• Manage transactions efficiently by leveraging the scale of our global presence
• Gain visibility and control of both local and global transactions
• Manage liquidity and short‑term investments
• Benefit from fully integrated portal and file

The world looks flat all right and BOA looks like a flat iron to me.

What is history after all?

I am watching Winston in 1984 declaring at his work installation that Oceania is at war with Eastasia and it has always been at war with Eastasia and  Eurasia is our ally and Eurasia has always been our ally.

And of course as the situation of Oceania changes, the history changes.

And lately the corporate fronts have been telling us that:

We never declared war upon Germany during WWII.

Puerto Rico is not part of the USA.

John Kerry never saw battle in Vietnam

George W. Bush dutifully fulfilled all his obligations in the National Guard while he hid from the draft.

We went to war against Saddam Hussein because of his connection with 9/11/01 or was it WMD'S or was it Iraq's nucular program or was it because of Iraq's missile programs or was it because Saddam was a bad man or was it because we wished to spread democracy into the Middle East--two years after W. Bush said that we should not be nation builders.

And of course before that we should support Saddam in our fight against Irani Terrorists

And the Soviet Wars in Afghanistan were just another example of the international spread of communism.  A war perpetrated upon the innocents

And the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-1965 were an attack upon individual freedoms and therefore Civil-Rights.

And the Middle Class pays more taxes under the Obama Administration that it did under the Bush Administration

And that we do not have to worry about the national debt.

And that we do have to worry about the national debt.

AND WE HAVE TO FIGHT THEM OVER THERE INSTEAD OF HAVING TO FIGHT THEM OVER HERE.

The History Channel sold its soul to BOA for five mill. Some middle management guy at BOA gets that much as a bonus for one week's work.

But Murdoch has been purchasing his history for decades, so what is there to fear from a twelve hour mockumentary at the History Channel?

And we have the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation and scores of other corporate fascist repositories of false information keeping the DREAM alive.

One nation under God and the corporate oligarchy, indivisible to stop any semblance of liberty and justice except for the chosen few.