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2/9/2012 The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement
As readers may know by now, 49 of 50 states have agreed to join the so-called mortgage settlement, with Oklahoma the lone refusenik. Although the fine points are still being hammered out, various news outlets (New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal) have details, with Dave Dayen’s overview at Firedoglake the best thus far. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that the SEC is about to launch some securities litigation against major banks. Since the statue of limitations has already run out on securities filings more than five years old, this means they’ll clip the banks for some of the very last (and dreckiest) deals they shoved out the door before the subprime market gave up the ghost. The various news services are touting this pact at the biggest multi-state settlement since the tobacco deal in 1998. While narrowly accurate, this deal is bush league by comparison even though the underlying abuses in both cases have had devastating consequences. The tobacco agreement was pegged as being worth nearly $250 billion over the first 25 years. Adjust that for inflation, and the disparity is even bigger. That shows you the difference in outcomes between a case where the prosecutors have solid evidence backing their charges, versus one where everyone know a lot of bad stuff happened, but no one has come close to marshaling the evidence. (Naked Capitalism)
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posted: 2/13/12                   0       7
#1 



11/14/2011 New Book: Insider Trading Rampant in Congress: Members reap benefits of policy knowledge on Wall Street
In Congress, it’s easy to do the kind of stock trading that “would send the rest of us to prison,” writes Peter Schweizer in a new book on the Hill’s upside-down ethics. Members of Congress are, of course, equipped with insider knowledge about upcoming policy, and they’re able to play the market based on that knowledge, Schweizer asserts. In Throw Them All Out, the author probes the trading activities of a handful of congressional leaders of both parties, and finds evidence of questionable dealings. (Newser)
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posted: 11/27/11                   0       6
#2 



10/25/2011 Reckless Endangerment: Totally Corrupt America
Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. http://www.vdare.com/print/13156 Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. I would not be surprised if Taibbi’s book motivated the more aware participants of Occupy Wall Street. Taibbi’s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshur Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment. Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong. I am not suggesting that Morgenson and Rosner pull their punches. To the contrary, the authors deliver enough knockouts to be contenders with Taibbi as world champions in exposing the reckless fraud that the US financial sector and its regulators now epitomize. (Paul Craig Roberts)
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posted: 10/28/11                   0       6
#3 



8/17/2011 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
Matt Taibbi: A whistle blower says the agency has illegally destroyed thousands of documents, letting financial crooks off the hook.

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record. That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history. Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or "Matters Under Inquiry" – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission's internal website. "After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation," the site advised staffers, "you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI." (Rolling Stone)
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posted: 9/14/11                   0       5
#4 
keywords: Adam Storch, American International Group, Andrew Tong, Bank Of America, Bankers Trust, Barry Walters, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bill Laufer, Charles Grassley, Christopher Cox, Citigroup, Daniel Indiviglio, Darcy Flynn, Davis Polk, Der Spiegel, Deutsche Bank, Financial Crisis, Gary Aguirre, Gary Lynch, George Orwell, George W Bush, Germany, Goldman Sachs, Harry Markopolos, JP Morgan Chase, Jacqueline Millan, Joel Sauer, John Mack, John Nester, Julie Preuitt, Ken Hall, Laurence Brewer, Lehman Brothers, Linda Chatman Thomsen, Lynn Turner, Mary Schapiro, Morgan Stanley, National Archives And Records Administration, Paul Wester, Pequot Capital, Ping Jiang, Police, R Allen Stanford, Richard Walker, Robert Khuzami, Rolf Breuer, Sac Capital, Seaboard, Securities And Exchange Commission, Stephen Cutler, Texas, The Atlantic, US Congress, University Of Pennsylvania, Untied States, Wall Street, Whistleblowers, William Mclucas, Wilmerhale Add New Keyword To Link



4/17/2011 America's two-class tax system: Records bear out that corporations and the wealthy live by a different set of U.S. rules from everyone else.
Eric Cantor, who has represented a section of Richmond, Va., in Congress since 2001 and now is the House majority leader, appears to want to craft a permanent U.S. tax system that caters exclusively to those at the top. So does Michele Bachmann, the Republican representative from Minnesota, a onetime tax lawyer who hopes to make a run for the White House. Likewise, Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota, who also sees himself sitting in the Oval Office. Needless to say, none state their proposals like that. But that's the way their numbers and provisions add up. Like others in Congress and the media, Cantor, Bachmann, and Pawlenty insist that American businesses are paying too much in corporate income tax. They claim the onerous tax burden is killing jobs and forcing companies to move abroad. To reverse the nation's fortunes, they say, all Washington need do is slash the corporate tax rate, thereby reducing the amount of taxes these businesses are forced to pay. What's scary is a growing number of citizens believe them. That means a forecast made years ago by William J. Casey, a wily Republican from another era who liked to dabble in the intelligence world's black arts inside and outside the country, and who helped craft the election of Ronald Reagan, is coming true. After taking office, President Reagan installed Casey as head of the CIA in 1981. After his first staff meeting at the agency, Casey was quoted as saying: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." One of the more egregious falsehoods being peddled by the corporate tax cutters is that companies doing business in the United States are taxed at an exorbitant rate. Not so. Though the United States has one of the highest statutory rates on the books at 35 percent, the only fair way to measure what companies actually pay is their effective rate

what they ultimately pay after deductions, credits, and assorted write-offs. By that yardstick, companies in the United States consistently pay taxes at rates lower than corporations in Japan and many nations in Europe. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
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posted: 4/18/11                   0       3
#5 



2/16/2011 Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy -- but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
By Matt Taibbi. Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that." I put down my notebook. "Just that?" "That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there." Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people. This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18. The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once." (Rolling Stone)
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posted: 3/12/11                   0       4
#6 
keywords: Al Dunlap, American International Group, Art Samberg, Arthur Tildesley Jr, Bailouts, Bank Of America, Barack Obama, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Boston, Charles Grassley, Charles Schumer, Citigroup, Columbia University, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Credit Default Swaps, Credit Suisse, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Debevoise & Plimpton, Derek Jeter, Derivatives, Deutsche Bank, Dick Fuld, Dick Walker, Eliot Spitzer, Enron, Eric Dinallo, Fabrice Tourre, Fannie Mae, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Freddie Mac, Gary Aguirre, Gary Crittenden, Gary Lynch, General Electric, George W Bush, Germany, Goldman Sachs, Government Transparency, Heller Financial, Henry Waxman, Hillary Clinton, Hilton Hotels, Immigration, JP Morgan Chase, Jed Rakoff, Joe Cassano, John Mack, Joseph St Denis, Lanny Breuer, Lehman Brothers, Linda Thomsen, Lloyd Blankfein, Lynn Turner, Mary Jo White, Merrill Lynch, Mexico, Morgan Stanley, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Office Of The Comptroller Of The Currency, Ohio, Oliver Budde, Paul Berger, Philadelphia, Police, Portfolio Magazine, Preet Bharara, Residential Mortgage-backed Securities, Restricted Stock Units, Rite Aid, Robert Khuzami, Robert Morgenthau, Roger Clemens, Rudy Giuliani, Securities And Exchange Commission, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Sunbeam, Switzerland, Terrorists, US Congress, US Department Of Justice, United States, Wall Street, War On Drugs, Worldcom Add New Keyword To Link



9/3/2010 Did market manipulation cause Wall Street ‘flash crash?’
The Securities and Exchange Commission is keeping a close eye on a stock market practice that may violate rules against market manipulation, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The practice, called quote stuffing, happens when stock exchanges are flooded and, at times, clogged by huge numbers of buy and sell orders orders that are ultimately cancelled. Regulators are trying to determine if traders are using rapid-fire computerized trading systems to cause the inundation by design, purposefully gumming up the exchanges and giving traders an information advantage on small price movements in stocks. The Journal reported that the SEC is investigating whether quote stuffing may have been one of the causes of the May 6 flash crash, when the Dow briefly plunged 1,000 points in a matter of minutes. To get an idea of the volume of quotes produced by high-speed, computerized trading, consider this: During the day of the flash crash, there were hundreds of times that a single stock had over 1,000 quotes from one exchange in a single second, according to Nanex, a ticker of quotes and trades. (The Raw Story)
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posted: 10/6/10                   0       3
#7 



6/2/2010 Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill
Firm's stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment (The Raw Story)
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posted: 6/3/10                   0       16
#8 



5/7/2010 Elena Kagan's Goldman Sachs Ties Brought Up Again
The Justice Department, likewise, downplayed the findings in statements issued to inquiring reporters. "This advisory group was comprised of leaders from various sectors including academia, the media, business, and other industry," said spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. "They met once a year for a daylong conference organized around public policy matters. The group was not involved in making any investment decisions for the company." (Huffington Post)
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posted: 5/25/10                   0       18
#9 



5/6/2010 Boots & Coots Reports First Quarter Results
"One event was the mobilization cost for the new ONGC secure and salvage project. By the end of the quarter we had mobilized and expect to realize the positive financial impact of the project in the second quarter. In addition there were costs associated with a higher than expected currency devaluation expense in Venezuela and expenses incurred relating to our announced merger agreement with Halliburton, both non-operational items." (Wall Street Journal)
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posted: 6/2/10                   0       10
#10 



4/30/2010 Goldman shares plunge as feds open criminal probe
The SEC brought civil fraud charges against Goldman and a trader in connection with the transactions in 2006 and 2007. The agency alleged the firm misled investors by failing to tell them the subprime mortgage securities had been chosen with help from a Goldman hedge fund client, Paulson & Co., that was betting the investments would fail. Goldman and the trader, Fabrice Tourre, have denied wrongdoing and said they will contest the allegations in court. (Associated Press)
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posted: 5/29/10                   0       15
#11 



4/27/2010 A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Government: Names Attached to the Giant Squid’s Tentacles
Here you will find, I believe, the most comprehensive list of people-groups yet available to show how Obama’s administration has really become the Goldman Sachs administration. The Obama administration is not the first administration that Goldman has infiltrated, although it is perhaps the one that has been most completely co-opted from top to bottom. (Fire Dog Lake)
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posted: 5/22/10                   0       21
#12 
keywords: Adam Storch, Alan Greenspan, Alexander Hamilton, Alice Rivlin, American International Group, Anne Fudge, Asia, Bailouts, Barack Obama, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Bill Clinton, Bill Dudley, Brookings Institution, Business Intelligence Group, California, Citigroup, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Commonwealth Edison, Congressional Budget Office, Council On Foreign Relations, David Lipton, Desmond Lachman, Diana Farrell, Douglas Elmendorf, Eric Mindich, Evercore Partners, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Galleon Group, Gary Gensler, Gene Sperling, George W Bush, Goldman Sachs, Great Depression, Gregory Craig, Hamilton Project, Harold Ford, Health Care, Henry Paulson, Hillary Clinton, Illinois, International Monetary Fund, Jacob Lew, James Rubin, Jason Furman, Jesse Unruh, John Kenneth Galbraith, Joseph Biden, Karen Kornbluh, Lael Brainard, Larry Summers, Lehman Brothers, Mark Gallogly, Mark Patterson, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Matt Taibbi, Medicare, Mexico, Michael Frohman, Michael Greenstone, Military, Neel Kashkari, New York Stock Exchange, North American Free Trade Agreement, O'melveny And Myers, Ohio, Peco Energy CO, Pennsylvania, Penny Pritzker, Peter Orszag, Quadrangle Group, Rahm Emanuel, Raj Rajaratnam, Robert Hormats, Robert Reischauer, Robert Rubin, Roger Altman, Salomon Smith Barney, Securities And Exchange Commission, Social Security, Stanford Group, Stephen Friedman, Steve Rattner, Thomas Donilon, Timothy Geithner, US Congress, US Department Of State, US Department Of The Treasury, Unicom Corp, United States, University Of Minnesota, Vietnam War, Warren Buffett, White House Add New Keyword To Link



4/27/2010 Possible Supreme Court pick had ties with Goldman Sachs
Solicitor General Elena Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, according to the financial disclosures she filed when President Obama appointed her last year to her current post. Kagan served on the Goldman panel from 2005 through 2008, when she was dean of Harvard Law School, and received a $10,000 stipend for her service in 2008, her disclosure forms show. (USA Today)
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posted: 5/23/10                   0       17
#13 



4/20/2010 Goldman Donations to Obama Campaign Totaled Nearly $1 Million
Obama received the money from employees and their family members, making Goldman Sachs second only to the University of California as his biggest single source for donors in 2007 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Wall Street provided three of Obama’s seven biggest sources of contributors for his presidential bid. In 2007 and 2008, Goldman Sachs employees and family members gave him $994,795, Citigroup Inc. $701,290, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. $695,132. (Bloomberg)
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posted: 6/4/10                   0       8
#14 



4/20/2010 Goldman Sachs: Master of the Universe
The status applies to all Wall Street giants, none, however, the equal of Goldman, the Grand Master. Like the fabled comic book Superman hero, it's: * faster than its competitors, thanks to its proprietary software ability to front run markets (illegal, but no matter); * more powerful than the government it controls; and * able to leap past competitors, given its special status. (Baltimore Chronicle)
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posted: 5/22/10                   0       16
#15 



4/18/2010 Goldman Sachs set to pay £3.5bn in bonuses
Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 84% owned by the UK taxpayer, appears to have been one of the biggest losers from the alleged fraud. The bank is this weekend considering legal action against Goldman. The charges relate to a mortgage bond issued by the bank. The American regulators claim Goldman designed the bond so it would drop in value. Goldman Sachs last year paid £10 billion in bonuses. (London Times)
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posted: 5/29/10                   0       9
#16 



3/10/2010 Synergy in Security: The Rise of the National Security Complex
In his January 17, 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Five decades later, this complex, which Eisenhower defined as the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry,” is no longer new. And while Eisenhower’s warning is still pertinent, the scale, scope, and substance of the complex have changed in alarming ways. It has morphed into a new type of public-private partnership—one that spans military, intelligence, and homeland-security contracting, and might be better called a “national security complex.”

 (Dollars and Sense)
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posted: 10/13/10                   0       2
#17 



2/17/2010 Citigroup Stock Proving Irresistible to Hedge Funds
“The sum of the parts is worth less than each individual part,” said Garnick. “It is easier for investors to assign value to a company if it is broken up into its many component parts. In this market environment people are starting to reward single business unit companies.” (Bloomberg)
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posted: 2/23/10                   1       9
#18 
keywords: Appaloosa Management, Appaloosa Management, Bruce Berkowitz, Citigroup, Daniel Loeb, David Tepper, Eric Mindich, Eton Park Capital Management, Fairholme Capital Management, Financial Crisis, George Soros, Goldman Sachs, Hedge Funds, John Paulson, Paulson & CO, Securities And Exchange Commission, Soros Fund Management, Third Point, United States, Vikram Pandit Add New Keyword To Link



1/31/2010 Geithner: 'I had no role' in an AIG cover up
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers Wednesday that he had no involvement in an apparent attempt by government regulators to withhold crucial information about AIG's bailout from the public. "I had no role in making decisions regarding what to disclose," Geithner testified at a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. * Facebook * Digg * Twitter * Buzz Up! * Email * Print * Comment on this story AIG payouts: Who got what Counterparties that got more than $1 billion from the government and AIG. AIG counterparty Total payment Societe Generale $16.5 billion Goldman Sachs $14 billion Deutsche Bank $8.5 billion Merrill Lynch $6.2 billion Calyon $4.3 billion UBS $3.8 billion Deutsche Zentral Genossenschaftsbank $1.8 billion Barclays $1.5 billion Bank of Montreal $1.4 billion Royal Bank of Scotland $1.1 billion Wachovia $1 billion Source:Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. New York Fed officials instructed AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) not to disclose more than a dozen controversial transactions to the Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2008. At the time, Geithner was the president of the New York Fed, but he said he had recused himself from the day-to-day operations at that time because of his nomination to be Treasury secretary. At least two lawmakers weren't buying Geithner's denial.

"Why shouldn't we ask for your resignation?" Mica asked Geithner. "We're not getting the whole story, we're getting the blame story. You're either incompetent on the job or you knew what was taking place and you tried to conceal it, and I think that's grounds for your review." Geithner angrily responded to Mica, "You don't know me very well." He then more calmly said, "That is your right to have that opinion. I have served my country as carefully and ably as I can." AIG's bailout has incited furor among lawmakers and the public, as the troubled insurer has come to symbolize the corporate greed, risky behavior and lack of regulation that many believe caused the Great Recession. The issue at hand on Wednesday was one of the bailout's most contentious: a decision by the New York Fed to pay counterparties 100 cents on the dollar for the underlying assets that AIG has insured through so-called credit default swap agreements. As a result, $62.1 billion of taxpayer and AIG funds were essentially funneled to 16 banks that were counterparties to AIG insurance contracts.

Due to many New York Fed employees' ties to Wall Street investment banks -- including Geithner -- many lawmakers and members of the public have implied that the regulator's decisions may have been made for personal gain. "I think your commitment to Goldman Sachs trumped your commitment to the American people," said Rep. Steven Lynch, D-Mass. (CNN)
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posted: 7/3/10                   0       7
#19 



1/25/2010 Darrell Issa's Special Report On AIG Could Be The End Of Geithner
GEITHNER’S ROLE IN THE AIG COVER UP REMAINS UNCLEAR When asked directly if he was involved in the efforts by the FRBNY to prevent disclosure of the AIG counterparty payments, Secretary Geithner responded, “I wasn’t involved in that decision.” On January 8, 2010, FRBNY General Counsel Thomas Baxter wrote Ranking Member Issa to clarify the role of then-President Geithner: [M]atters relating to AIG securities law disclosures were not brought to the attention of Mr. Geithner …. In my judgment as the New York Fed’s chief legal officer, disclosure matters of this nature did not warrant the attention of the president. Mr. Baxter reiterated this claim in an interview with Committee staff. Questions of securities disclosure, Baxter said, were “legal stuff,” and Baxter did not bring legal stuff to the attention of then-President Geithner. However, Baxter said that “on significant policy issues, of course I would go” to Geithner. However, documents received by the Committee suggest that Secretary Geithner was, at a minimum, engaged personally in reviewing what information about the AIG bailout would be revealed to Congress and the public. On November 6, 2008, SarahDahlgren, the FRBNY’s lead staff member in AIG’s operations, e-mailed Geithner with a proposed statement regarding AIG’s upcoming equity capital raise for Geithner’s approval: [I]n terms of saying something publicly about our intentions, we … think that saying something that conveys the following … makes sense: It is our (Federal Reserve/Treasury) continued intention to put the company in a sound capital position and exit the facility/preferred securities/common stock ownership as soon as practicable… [I]f you are good with this, …we would also make sure that the company sticks to this line (echo)…. [emphasis added] On November 13, 2008, Geithner received a report on AIG’s restructuring that would be sent to Congress, which Geithner had asked to personally review. Sophia Allison, a staff member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, e-mailed the draft congressional report to several Federal Reserve staff: Attached is a draft Congressional report for the restructuring package for AIG announced on Monday, November 10. …I tried to take everything in the report from publicly available documents, such as press releases, the prior AIG Congressional Report, and AIG’s most recent 10-Q. If there is anything in the report that you believe should not be publicly disclosed, please specifically point that out. [emphasis added] Michael Nelson, a staff member of the FRBNY, forwarded Allison’s email to Geithner with the following message: Tim – this is the draft EESA-required filing on AIG that the Board owes the Hill, as you requested. [emphasis added] In addition, Secretary Geithner’s meeting logs from his tenure as President of the FRBNY show that he was regularly engaged with top AIG officials and the FRBNY officials directly responsible for AIG’s disclosures to the SEC. Geithner’s schedule shows that he had at least six formal meetings with top FRBNY staff members about AIG-related issues between November 4, 2008, and November 21, 2008. It is unclear whether AIG’s disclosure obligations were discussed in these meetings. At a minimum, the cover-up of the details about AIG’s counterparty payments began on Secretary Geithner’s watch, and the culture of the FRBNY in which this behavior occurred reflected his leadership. Secretary Geithner needs to explain his role in the cover-up, and if he thinks the behavior of his staff at the FRBNY was appropriate.

GEITHNER’S CLAIMS RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT PURPOSE OF AIG BAILOUT Secretary Geithner’s claim to SIGTARP that the backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties had nothing to do with the health of AIG’s counterparties also raises questions about why AIG was bailed out in the first place. As the Wall Street Journal notes: [I]f Mr. Geithner now says the AIG bailout wasn’t driven by a need to rescue CDS counterparties, then what was the point? Why pay Goldman [Sachs] and even foreign banks like Societe Generale billions of tax dollars to make them whole? Secretary Geithner now claims that the point of AIG’s bailout was to protect AIG’s insurance policy holders: AIG was providing a range of insurance products to households across the country. And if AIG had defaulted, you would have seen a downgrade leading to the liquidation and failure of a set of insurance contracts that touched Americans across this country and, of course, savers around the world. However, as the Wall Street Journal further explains: Yet, if there is one thing that all observers seemed to agree on last year, it was that AIG’s money to pay policyholders was segregated and safe inside the regulated insurance subsidiaries. If the real systemic danger was the condition of these highly regulated subsidiaries – where there was no CDS trading – then the Beltway narrative implodes. Secretary Geithner’s inconsistent statements and apparent contradictions raise important questions about the decision to not only funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to AIG’s counterparties, but also the decision to bail out AIG itself.

The FRBNY and its attorneys at Davis Polk interfered with AIG’s securities disclosures in several ways. They edited AIG’s SEC filings in ways that made it more difficult for investors and the public to understand the ML3 transactions. They contacted the SEC directly and pressured it to treat AIG’s filings differently from other companies’ filings. In addition, they appear to have forced AIG to cancel a compensation-related filing that it was required to make. The FRBNY’s edits of AIG’s filings and the FRBNY’s pressure on the SEC were intended to serve the Fed’s interests by obscuring embarrassing details about the FRBNY’s backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties. Investors cannot be protected by a disclosure system that only requires full transparency when the Federal Reserve’s embarrassment is not at stake. The special SEC procedures established via FRBNY pressure also demonstrate that bailouts lead to enforced favoritism.

Finally, the secrecy, concealment, and lack of transparency in the conduct of the Federal Reserve have serious implications for the continued health of democracy and free markets. The Federal Reserve’s payment of par to AIG’s counterparties and the subsequent cover-up of information about these payments raise concerns about the accountability of the unelected bureaucrats within the Federal Reserve System. The fact that a quasi-government agency, unaccountable to the American people, likely wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and went to great lengths to prevent Congress and the American people from learning about these actions demonstrates the threat that the Federal Reserve poses to basic principles of American democracy. (quotes selected by Zero Hedge) (US House of Representatives)
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posted: 7/3/10                   0       8
#20 



1/1/2010 Robert Rubin
Economic record and the 2008 global financial crisis

Rubin's assistance to Citigroup's lobbying efforts were successful in getting the Glass-Steagall Act repealed in October 1999. (Wikipedia)
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posted: 5/26/10                   0       10
#21 



9/23/2009 Even the Part-Time Jobs are Disappearing -- The Economy is a Lie, Too
Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with one million school children now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over. The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusional. Consumer spending is 70% of the US economy. It is the driving force, and it has been shut down. Except for the super rich, there has been no growth in consumer incomes in the 21st century. Statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com reports that real household income has never recovered its pre-2001 peak.

The unemployment rate, as reported, is a fiction and has been since the Clinton administration. The unemployment rate does not include jobless Americans who have been unemployed for more than a year and have given up on finding work. The reported 10% unemployment rate is understated by the millions of Americans who are suffering long-term unemployment and are no longer counted as unemployed. As each month passes, unemployed Americans drop off the unemployment role due to nothing except the passing of time. The inflation rate, especially “core inflation,” is another fiction. “Core inflation” does not include food and energy, two of Americans’ biggest budget items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) assumes, ever since the Boskin Commission during the Clinton administration, that if prices of items go up consumers substitute cheaper items. This is certainly the case, but this way of measuring inflation means that the CPI is no longer comparable to past years, because the basket of goods in the index is variable. The Boskin Commission’s CPI, by lowering the measured rate of inflation, raises the real GDP growth rate. The result of the statistical manipulation is an understated inflation rate, thus eroding the real value of Social Security income, and an overstated growth rate. Statistical manipulation cloaks a declining standard of living. (Counter Punch)
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posted: 8/1/11                   0       1
#22 



8/20/2009 Larry Flynt: Common Sense 2009
The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich (Huffington Post)
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posted: 8/27/09                   0       15
#23 



7/9/2009 The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they're about to do it again

But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. (Rolling Stone)
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posted: 5/26/10                   0       15
#24 
keywords: Al Gore, Alan Greenspan, Alternative Energy, American International Group, Arjun Murti, Bailouts, Bank Of America, Barack Obama, Bart Stupak, Bear Stearns, Big Oil, Bill Clinton, Blue Ridge Corporation, Blue Source Llc, British Petroleum, British Petroleum, Brooksley Born, California, California Public Employees' Retirement System, Canada, Carbon Dioxide, Changing World Technologies, Chicago Climate Exchange, Citigroup, Climate Change, Collateralized Debt Obligations, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Countrywide, Cramer & CO, Credit Default Swaps, Daimlerchrysler, David Blood, David Viniar, Dennis Kozlowski, Derivatives, Ebay, Ed Liddy, Electric Vehicles, Eliot Spitzer, Enron, Eric Salzman, Etoys, Fannie Mae, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Freddie Mac, Gary Gensler, Generation Investment Management, George W Bush, Germany, Gibson Greetings, Goldman Sachs, Great Depression, Green Growth Fund, Gsamp Trust, Henry Paulson, Horizon Wind Energy, International Monetary Fund, Internet, Internet Bubble, Ipos, Italy, J Arons & CO, Jay Ritter, Jerry Yang, Jim Cramer, Jmp Securities, John Kenneth Galbraith, John Mccain, John Thain, Jon Corzine, Joshua Bolten, Kansas, Keith Olbermann, Ken Lay, Ken Newcombe, Larry Summers, Lehman Brothers, Lloyd Blankfein, Lloyd Doggett, Marcus Goldman, Mark Ferguson, Mark Patterson, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Meg Whitman, Merrill Lynch, Michael Greenberger, Michael Hecht, Michael Masters, Moody's, Nasdaq, National Economic Council, Neel Kashkari, Neil Levin, Netzero, New Jersey, New York, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, New York Times, Nicholas Maier, Oil Bubble, Orange County, Peter Harris, Procter & Gamble, Residential Mortgage-backed Securities, Robert Rubin, Robert Steele, Samuel Sachs, Securities And Exchange Commission, Shenandoah Corporation, Sidney Weinberg, Simon Johnson, Standard & Poor's, Stephen Friedman, Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Texas, Tyco International, US Congress, US Department Of The Treasury, US Energy Information Administration, US Government Accountability Office, United States, University Of Florida, University Of Maryland, Wachovia, Wall Street, Webvan, White House, William Dudley, World Bank, Yahoo Add New Keyword To Link



6/26/2009 Derivatives Regulation Fight Lurks in US Climate Bill
He added to the bill a measure that would regulate over-the-counter derivatives, accepting a stipulation sought by other Democrats that those rules would be repealed if Congress adopts broader market regulations (Bloomberg)
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posted: 6/29/09                   3       13
#25 



6/22/2009 Insiders Exit Shares at the Fastest Pace in Two Years
Executives at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the biggest stock-market rally in 71 years to sell their shares at the fastest pace since credit markets started to seize up two years ago (Bloomberg)
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posted: 6/25/09                   1       16
#26 



6/22/2009 Kurt Sonnenfeld : Exclusive interview
9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public

As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: "What I saw at certain moments and in certain places ... is very disturbing!" (Voltaire Net)
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posted: 6/23/09                   3       20
#27 



6/18/2009 Democrats to push through banking overhaul quickly
Democratic leaders have committed to enacting by the end of the year the biggest regulatory revision to the U.S. financial system since the 1930s

an undertaking so ambitious it has some lawmakers worried about missteps (Associated Press)
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posted: 6/18/09                   6       20
#28 



6/17/2009 Plan for More Fed Power Could Become a Lightning Rod
The plan envisions a new regulatory regime for systemically important payment, clearing and settlement systems, a "clear and comprehensive federal authority for oversight" focused on the risk management of settlement systems (Wall Street Journal)
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posted: 6/17/09                   2       19
#29 



6/16/2009 Strange Inconsistencies in the $134.5 Billion Bearer Bond Mystery
On March 30, 2009, the US Treasury Department announced that USD $134.5 billion remained in its Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]. The stated amount of seized bearer bonds was $134.5 billion. (Seeking Alpha)
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posted: 6/18/09                   5       20
#30 



6/15/2009 Details Set for Remake of Financial Regulations
At the center of the plan, which administration officials are referring to as a "white paper," is a move to remake powers of the Federal Reserve to oversee the biggest financial players, give the government the power to unwind and break up systemically important companies -- much like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does with failed banks -- and create a new regulator for consumer-oriented financial products (Wall Street Journal)
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posted: 6/19/09                   6       20
#31 



6/10/2009 Obama Administration to Seek New Power for SEC on Executive Pay
to let shareholders vote on executive pay and make directors who set compensation more independent (Bloomberg)
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posted: 6/10/09                   4       29
#32 



6/7/2009 The Economy Is Still at the Brink
Obama, "It's safe to say we have stepped back from the brink, that there is some calm that didn’t exist before" (New York Times)
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posted: 6/7/09                   7       24
#33 



6/1/2009 Bilderberg Agenda Exposed
a keen interest in persuading the United States to surrender sovereignty to the International Criminal Court, or ICC (American Free Press)
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posted: 5/22/09                   6       38
#34 



5/6/2009 Goldman Sachs's $100 Million Trading Days Hit Record
Goldman Sachs’s trading results reflected the firm’s willingness to take on more risk during the period. Value-at- risk, an estimate of how much the firm could lose in any given day, surged to an average of $240 million in the first quarter from $157 million in the first quarter of 2008 (Bloomberg)
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posted: 7/7/09                   0       9
#35 



4/23/2009 Did government block transparency? In testimony released by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Bank of America's CEO Ken Lewis says he was pressured by the government to keep quiet about losses from absorbing troubled Merrill Lynch (American Public Media)
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posted: 6/10/09                   3       21
#36 



4/2/2009 FASB Eases Fair-Value Rules Amid Lawmaker Pressure
The Financial Accounting Standards Board, pressured by U.S. lawmakers and financial companies, voted to relax fair-value accounting rules that Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. say don’t work when markets are inactive (Bloomberg)
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posted: 8/21/09                   0       10
#37 
keywords: American Bankers Association, Arthur Levitt Jr, Bank Of America, Blackstone Group, Citigroup, Edward Yingling, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Financial Accounting Standards Board, First Trust Advisors, Richard Parsons, Robert Herz, Robert Rubin, Securities And Exchange Commission, Spencer Bachus, Stephen Schwarzman, United States, Wells Fargo, William Donaldson, William Isaac Add New Keyword To Link



2/4/2009 Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull
Bailout Pay Cuts; Madoff Warnings Ignored?

QUESTION: That seems as if people that the president called shameless last week are being allowed to go on the honor system. I mean, what is the accountability? You said accountability. What is the teeth? I mean, what happens if these people violate it? Do we yank the money back? Do we bankrupt the firms? Do we fire the executives? ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I will get clarification from Treasury on that, but I don't -- I mean, first of all, the beginning and the end of these is not just putting something on a Web site. (CNN)
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posted: 6/4/10                   0       7
#38 



11/7/2008 Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal
New Obama Chief of Staff, Others on Board, Missed "Red Flags" of Alleged Fraud Scheme

President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com. According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002. Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint (click here to read) but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) (click here to read) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." (ABC)
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posted: 4/2/11                   0       1
#39 



10/23/2008 Greenspan Admits 'Flaw' to Congress, Predicts More Economic Problems (PBS)
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posted: 5/26/09                   3       24
#40 



10/17/2008 The Guys From ‘Government Sachs’
This summer, when the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., sought help navigating the Wall Street meltdown, he turned to his old firm, Goldman Sachs, snagging a handful of former bankers and other experts in corporate restructurings (New York Times)
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posted: 7/7/09                   0       12
#41 



9/30/2008 U.S. Lawmakers Spurn Pleas From Leadership in Rejecting Bailout
A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll last week showed that 55 percent of Americans were against using taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street, with 31 percent in favor.

Pelosi and Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Caucus chairman, were among leaders patrolling the House floor for support. (Bloomberg)
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posted: 6/4/10                   0       7
#42 



9/23/2008 NO To The Paulson-Bernanke Derivatives Scam Bailout
Bail Out the American People, Not Wall Street! An Economic Recovery Strategy for Protectionists, Dirigists, Mercantilists, and Populists (Webster G. Tarpley)
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posted: 6/18/09                   5       22
#43 



1/1/2007 BBC Foreknowledge
Interview with Craig Bartmer, Former NYPD, First Responder, Ground Zero Worker

Danny Jowenko controlled demolition expert (Film: WTC7 The smoking gun of 9/11)
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posted: 5/29/10                   0       14
#44 



11/2/2005 Rumsfeld Profits From Bird Flu Scare
Among the beneficiaries of the run on Tamiflu is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was chairman of Gilead from 1997 to 2001 and owns at least $5 million of the stock, which has jumped from $35 in April to $47. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead's board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead in 2005 (Fortune)
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posted: 5/17/09                   2       24
#45 



10/27/2004 The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power
His complex web of financial interests, companies and foundations makes Halliburton look like a Mom & Pop operation. (Accuracy In Media)
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posted: 6/15/09                   5       20
#46 



7/15/2004 The Truth About the Drug Companies
Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular drug—usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the great outdoors—is a more general message. Boiled down to its essentials, it is this: “Yes, prescription drugs are expensive, but that shows how valuable they are. Besides, our research and development costs are enormous, and we need to cover them somehow. As ‘research-based’ companies, we turn out a steady stream of innovative medicines that lengthen life, enhance its quality, and avert more expensive medical care. You are the beneficiaries of this ongoing achievement of the American free enterprise system, so be grateful, quit whining, and pay up.” More prosaically, what the industry is saying is that you get what you pay for. Is any of this true? Well, the first part certainly is. Prescription drug costs are indeed high—and rising fast. Americans now spend a staggering $200 billion a year on prescription drugs, and that figure is growing at a rate of about 12 percent a year (down from a high of 18 percent in 1999).1 Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year. Before its patent ran out, for example, the price of Schering-Plough’s top-selling allergy pill, Claritin, was raised thirteen times over five years, for a cumulative increase of more than 50 percent—over four times the rate of general inflation.2 As a spokeswoman for one company explained, “Price increases are not uncommon in the industry and this allows us to be able to invest in R&D.”3 In 2002, the average price of the fifty drugs most used by senior citizens was nearly $1,500 for a year’s supply. (Pricing varies greatly, but this refers to what the companies call the average wholesale price, which is usually pretty close to what an individual without insurance pays at the pharmacy.)

This is an industry that in some ways is like the Wizard of Oz—still full of bluster but now being exposed as something far different from its image. Instead of being an engine of innovation, it is a vast marketing machine. Instead of being a free market success story, it lives off government-funded research and monopoly rights. Yet this industry occupies an essential role in the American health care system, and it performs a valuable function, if not in discovering important new drugs at least in developing them and bringing them to market. But big pharma is extravagantly rewarded for its relatively modest functions. We get nowhere near our money’s worth. The United States can no longer afford it in its present form. (The New York Review of Books)
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posted: 12/26/10                   0       2
#47 
keywords: Arthritis, Astrazeneca, Aventis, Bayh-dole Act, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Bill Clinton, Birch Bayh, Bob Dole, Bristol-myers Squibb, Canada, Celebrex, Charles A Heimbold Jr, Cholesterol, Claritin, Crestor, DNA, Debbie Stabenow, Diabetes, European Union, Families Usa, France, George W Bush, Glaxosmithkline, Glucophage, Hatch-waxman Act, Health Care, Henry Waxman, Ims Health, Internet, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, Lescol, Lipitor, Lupron, Medicaid, Medicare, Merck, Mevacor, Mexico, National Institutes Of Health, Novartis, Orrin Hatch, Pfizer, Pravachol, Prilosec, Prozac, Roche, Ronald Reagan, Sanafi Synthelabo, Schering-plough, Securities And Exchange Commission, Switzerland, Tap Pharmaceuticals, US Congress, US Department Of Veterans Affairs, US Food And Drug Administration, US Patent And Trade Office, US Supreme Court, United Kingdom, United States, Wall Street, World War II, Wyeth, Zocor, Zoloft Add New Keyword To Link



3/1/2004 The Accounting Cycle: The Amazing World of Derivatives
Thinking about the world of structured finance and derivatives, I not only face a bewildering and complex set of securities, but also I must cope with an amazing set of accounting rules. As William Shakespeare would have said had he been an investor in recent times, "A derivative by any other name still reeks." (Smart Pros)
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posted: 5/4/09                   2       15
#48 



9/11/2003 Trade Center Financing On Shaky Ground
Silverstein's insurance policy caps payment at $3.5 billion, yet Silverstein was propounding a theory that entitled him to $7 billion (Forbes)
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posted: 5/14/09                   2       21
#49 



7/23/2003 Larry Silverstein's $3.5B Definition
Larry Silverstein, who holds a 99-year lease for the buildings that were destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, is claiming that he is entitled to recover $7.1 billion from the 22 insurers of the properties (Forbes)
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posted: 5/14/09                   2       22
#50 




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