When anyone HAS to tell you “trust me,” don’t. It’s one of the ways you can tell someone is lying to you. When that person is Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his partners in his new enterprise are JP Morgan, Citibank, Union Labor Life Insurance Co. and Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Inc. you should check to make sure they’ve not stolen what remains of your retirement funds, house or soul. These “people” to quote Mitt Romney, have committed the sorts of frauds that get human beings like Bernie Madoff to be thrown under a jail while they get slaps on the wrist. One of the partners has a history of gambling away the pensions of widows and orphans in one shady endeavor after another. Another partner makes its profits off of privatizing public assets… that they plan to help fund. If this sounds like a hustle or a dodge to you then you’ve been paying attention. If you haven’t let’s have a closer look at the Mayor’s partners that we’re supposed to trust as a part of the Marmoset Machine.

JP Morgan & Citibank are two of the Big Twenty Banks. What they all have in common is this: They are both Systemically Dangerous Institutions. They are both insolvent in any real economic terms because post the financial implosion of 2008 the Obama Administration took good care of its campaign investors. You might not know what Financial Accounting Standards Board is (FASB) so I’ll tell you. They set the professional auditing rules. One of the first things our Nobel Prize winner did was concoct a Congressional hearing hand in hand with the Chamber of Commerce where FASB was compelled to rewrite the accounting rules so that the banks do not have to acknowledge the losses from their fraudulent assets. To either of them solvent is to redefine the word but since they are both Systemically Dangerous Institutions what they’ve managed to maintain is a license to steal. Our system of financial regulations is farcical at this point this is not the post for that.

So JP Morgan and Citibank are insolvent corporate criminals of the highest order. You may remember how Judge Jed Rakoff  laid out how Citibank is not even getting a slap on the wrist for the billions of dollars in actual fraud they’ve committed. In fact, part of their paltry $285 million dollar settlement holds these prick-rat-bastards harmless for the mayhem they have caused. These people have destroyed more American lives than 9-11 ever did and they’re not done yet. You might recall how our good friends at JP Morgan got out of jail free with a $153 million dollar fine for KNOWINGLY creating fraudulent Mortgage Backed Securities and herding people INTO them. 

What we have here, in these two financial criminal enterprises, is what happens when elite institutions engage in massive fraud, the CEO’s and senior officers get obscenely rich, then they get bailed out and no one gets prosecuted. Again I quote: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” and Tony Sorpano wouldn’t trust these people to run his floating poker game.

One them is a foreign entity that is presently sucking up what will eventually come out to be trillions in resources that should be going to the public trust and that was built with public funds, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Inc, owners of the Chicago Skyway until way after your grandchildren are old enough to pay to drive over it. To have them acting as part of a public works process in anyway shape or form is at the very least a conflict of interest that is big enough to warp the fabric of space-time and suck all ambient light into it. This is not the fox guarding the henhouse this is the fox building hen houses, charging you to keep your chickens safe and using the profits to franchise the idea to wolves and lions.

The final partner the Union Labor Life Insurance Co. is a confirmed federal, civil felon for its violations of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, ERISA for dabbling in… wait for it, real estate with the PENSIONS of retirees among other things. Here’s a sample of just some of their other comedy stylings:
• ULLICO failed to properly disclose its compensation and receive approval from plan fiduciaries for funds taken directly from the investment account, the Labor Department charged. But a DoL spokesman told CFO.com the linchpin of the case was that the company allegedly kept millions of dollars in fees from third-party loan applicants who failed to go forward with loans, even though the plans that invested in the annuity assumed virtually all the risk of funding those loans. The money consisted of loan-commitment fees, construction-administration fees, and lender-inspection fees. 

To make matters hilarious these people will be hiding behind a 501 C-3, the tax designation for not-for-profit organizations. If that sounds like a clever way to avoid being held accountable or to deflect transparency you are correct. If it feels like the kind of thing professional financial criminals might suggest as a way to help them steal… ah take possession of the last bits of wealth our society possesses, the public sector you are correct again. So understand that neither the Freedom of Information or Open Meetings Acts, nor any other good government nonsense will apply to this little band of bad corporate partners. Now that you are clear on how dumb we’re supposed to be; understand that what makes this all right is that we are to trust Rahm Emanuel. Far as I can throw him, ten feet and as long as I’m looking at him and he’s not to be left alone in the house near the valuables. This is the perfect level of trust for ANY of Rahm’s partners in this conclave of “job creators” and the social contract DEMANDS we KNOW WHAT is happening with money tied to the common public good. It’s not even about Rahm it’s about good government. Something the Mayor has little understanding of but I feel we should press him to try and follow it.

We are going to trust a Mayor, who has refused to rule out privatizing the city’s water, to not start parceling out the city like a two-dollar whore… why? You might have forgotten, as one press corps maven did, that Rahm did a Romneyesque flip-flop on Midway Airport. In fact he asked the FAA to keep the privatization application for Midway open. If you think the Parking Lots, Parking Meters and Sky Way deals were bad you wait and see what Mayor Emanuel is capable of doing… The city won’t get ripped off, no instead it will find itself in a long-term financial relationship for its water, power, teachers, sanitation and possibly even fire and police that will make medical bill collectors seem like Girl Scouts with free cookies. Trust me… Really?