Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 1, 2010

In the late 1980s, Michael Milken made a fortune selling high-risk, high-yield ?junk bonds.?

Milken?s success attracted the interest of an ambitious prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani, who extorted a guilty plea by threatening to file spurious criminal charges against Milken?s brother and his elderly, ailing father. This would continue in perpetuity, even if each case were thrown out or resulted in acquittal.

Milken?s so-called ?junk bonds? helped underwrite the modern high-tech economy. Since 2008, however, taxpayers have been forced to buy hundreds of billions of dollars? worth of utterly useless bonds and other assets through the Wall Street bailout. Bloomberg News reports that Fed Commissar Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner ? in an unambiguous criminal act -- deliberately misled Congress and the public by describing useless bonds the Treasury bought from Bear Stearns as ?investment-grade assets?

In a rational world, Bernanke and Geithner would be in prison, and Michael Milken would be their warden.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.