http://www.zerohedge.com/article/sigtarp-calls-out-tim-geithner-various-violations-including-data-manipulation-cruel-cynicism
Little Timmy got his report card
Lets just say it wasn't up to par
And his conduct grade was even worse
SigTarp Neil Barofsky has just released the most scathing critique of all the idiots in the administration, with a particular soft spot for Tim Geithner.
On the failure of TARP to increase lending:
Showing posts with label Hank Paulson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hank Paulson. Show all posts
Monday, October 25, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
How Hank Paulson's inaction helped Goldman Sachs
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/10/101753/inaction-by-treasurys-paulson.html#storylink=omni_popular
Remember Hank Paulson and all those little special favors he did for his old friends?
Did he reign in their recklessness.....NO
Did Congress .............NO
Congress just ended up giving the banks more money because Hank Paulson threatened them with martial law.
Now why would he think martial law? Because if the truth came out about mortgage-gate, people would have sought out the highest form of retribution against the banking industry.
Henry Paulson has received widespread acclaim for his bare-knuckled decision-making as the treasury secretary at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, but former federal regulators say he missed multiple chances to contain the disaster.
Among the prime beneficiaries of Paulson's inaction in 2006 and 2007 was Goldman Sachs, the investment banking behemoth he ran before he was named to former President George W. Bush's Cabinet.
Paulson's failure to take steps to curb risky mortgage lending also enabled top executives of other Wall Street firms to continue cashing big bonus checks, while less privileged Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings in the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been widely praised for engineering the Wall Street bailouts
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/10/101753/inaction-by-treasurys-paulson.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz123tlz75k
Remember Hank Paulson and all those little special favors he did for his old friends?
Did he reign in their recklessness.....NO
Did Congress .............NO
Congress just ended up giving the banks more money because Hank Paulson threatened them with martial law.
Now why would he think martial law? Because if the truth came out about mortgage-gate, people would have sought out the highest form of retribution against the banking industry.
Henry Paulson has received widespread acclaim for his bare-knuckled decision-making as the treasury secretary at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, but former federal regulators say he missed multiple chances to contain the disaster.
Among the prime beneficiaries of Paulson's inaction in 2006 and 2007 was Goldman Sachs, the investment banking behemoth he ran before he was named to former President George W. Bush's Cabinet.
Paulson's failure to take steps to curb risky mortgage lending also enabled top executives of other Wall Street firms to continue cashing big bonus checks, while less privileged Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings in the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been widely praised for engineering the Wall Street bailouts
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/10/101753/inaction-by-treasurys-paulson.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz123tlz75k
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson (More AIG Shenanigans Edition)
Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson (More AIG Shenanigans Edition)
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/06/30/time-to-investigate-blankfein-and-paulson-more-aig-shenanigans-edition/
Those CDO's that blew up, were filled with MERS recorded mortgage contacts.
Now just how will the current day mortgage drama with MERS affect the sorted dealings of what now be seen for what it actually was.
The covering up of a mass ponzi scheme that had become exposed.
It's time to take another look at the crime that Congress, the Treasury and the FED all aided to cover up for the mortgage banking industry.
I think it's time "WE" all take a new look at an old problem with fresh eyes.
The New York Times has unearthed a damning tidbit about the bailout of AIG:
When the government began rescuing it from collapse in the fall of 2008 with what has become a $182 billion lifeline, A.I.G. was required to forfeit its right to sue several banks — including Goldman, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch — over any irregularities with most of the mortgage securities it insured in the precrisis years.
Yves here. How one reacts to this depends in no small measure as to how one views the salvage operation. For all intents and purposes, the rescue of AIG was merely a way to save the banks; the credit default swaps had been too big a source of faux capital (for US firms, via risk-dumping, and for Eurobanks, as part of a regulatory arbitrage) to let the insurer go. So any effort by the officialdom to aid the banks, most notably by paying out 100% on credit default swap exposures (which had already been written down by counterparties to less than par) was simply an effort to funnel more cash to the banks. Since we’ve had massive backdoor bailout mechanisms in addition to the overt ones, this orientation should come as no surprise.
But then we get to the funny business. Why a broad waiver? Why shouldn’t AIG (and by extension, taxpayers) not recover in the event of fraud? And we turn again to the ambiguous standing of AIG. By all rights, it ought to be owned by the government. The reason it isn’t is that we don’t do nationalization in America, and full ownership would require AIG’s debts to be consolidated with government debt. So another way to read this requirement is that the Fed and Treasury were opposed to having fraud at the banks exposed, period.
That is a very troubling stance for bank regulators to take. And experts agreed:
“Even if it turns out that it would be a hard suit to win, just the gesture of requiring A.I.G. to scrap its ability to sue is outrageous,” said David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The defense may be that the banking system was in trouble, and we couldn’t afford to destabilize it anymore, but that just strikes me as really going overboard.”
“This really suggests they had myopia and they were looking at it entirely through the perspective of the banks,” Mr. Skeel said.
Yves here. Also note that the banks mentioned by the Times account for a significant proportion of the Maiden Lane III exposures (the $62.9 billion CDO portfolio; note this does not include all CDO guarantees assumed by the Federal Reserve; seven Goldman Abacus trades stayed with AIG and were salvaged via credit extensions to AIG). An analysis by Tom Adams and Andrew Dittmer showed the significance of Merrill, Goldman, and SocGen (percentages based on par amount):
1. Merrill as both packager and counterparty 7.7%
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/06/30/time-to-investigate-blankfein-and-paulson-more-aig-shenanigans-edition/
Those CDO's that blew up, were filled with MERS recorded mortgage contacts.
Now just how will the current day mortgage drama with MERS affect the sorted dealings of what now be seen for what it actually was.
The covering up of a mass ponzi scheme that had become exposed.
It's time to take another look at the crime that Congress, the Treasury and the FED all aided to cover up for the mortgage banking industry.
I think it's time "WE" all take a new look at an old problem with fresh eyes.
The New York Times has unearthed a damning tidbit about the bailout of AIG:
When the government began rescuing it from collapse in the fall of 2008 with what has become a $182 billion lifeline, A.I.G. was required to forfeit its right to sue several banks — including Goldman, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch — over any irregularities with most of the mortgage securities it insured in the precrisis years.
Yves here. How one reacts to this depends in no small measure as to how one views the salvage operation. For all intents and purposes, the rescue of AIG was merely a way to save the banks; the credit default swaps had been too big a source of faux capital (for US firms, via risk-dumping, and for Eurobanks, as part of a regulatory arbitrage) to let the insurer go. So any effort by the officialdom to aid the banks, most notably by paying out 100% on credit default swap exposures (which had already been written down by counterparties to less than par) was simply an effort to funnel more cash to the banks. Since we’ve had massive backdoor bailout mechanisms in addition to the overt ones, this orientation should come as no surprise.
But then we get to the funny business. Why a broad waiver? Why shouldn’t AIG (and by extension, taxpayers) not recover in the event of fraud? And we turn again to the ambiguous standing of AIG. By all rights, it ought to be owned by the government. The reason it isn’t is that we don’t do nationalization in America, and full ownership would require AIG’s debts to be consolidated with government debt. So another way to read this requirement is that the Fed and Treasury were opposed to having fraud at the banks exposed, period.
That is a very troubling stance for bank regulators to take. And experts agreed:
“Even if it turns out that it would be a hard suit to win, just the gesture of requiring A.I.G. to scrap its ability to sue is outrageous,” said David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The defense may be that the banking system was in trouble, and we couldn’t afford to destabilize it anymore, but that just strikes me as really going overboard.”
“This really suggests they had myopia and they were looking at it entirely through the perspective of the banks,” Mr. Skeel said.
Yves here. Also note that the banks mentioned by the Times account for a significant proportion of the Maiden Lane III exposures (the $62.9 billion CDO portfolio; note this does not include all CDO guarantees assumed by the Federal Reserve; seven Goldman Abacus trades stayed with AIG and were salvaged via credit extensions to AIG). An analysis by Tom Adams and Andrew Dittmer showed the significance of Merrill, Goldman, and SocGen (percentages based on par amount):
1. Merrill as both packager and counterparty 7.7%
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Geithner and Paulson say more regulation needed
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Geithner-and-Paulson-say-more-apf-383173243.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=
Paulson and Geithner still spewing the same ole swill.
WE didn't know.
They caused it but hey they still didn't know and still won't admit that they did know now.
But they want more power to MAKE SURE that they'll know next time.
Addressing the market for so-called repurchase agreements, which banks depended on for massive daily loans from other financial companies -- Paulson said no one had recognized its danger as it grew.
"It grew like topsy-turvy," he said. "The system didn't keep up, the infrastructure didn't keep up ... and the participants got sloppy in their credit decisions."
Paulson also criticized Wall Street credit rating agencies that gave unrealistically high ratings to securities before the crisis. He said he supports legislation that would force them to disclose more and subject them to more scrutiny from reguluators.
Laws and regulations should no longer make specific references to ratings provided by Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's, Paulson said.
"I don't want the rating agencies to be held up as the font of all truth," he said. He said investors should "do some thinking for themselves."
Asked about the complex investments arranged by banks that have come under scrutiny and criticism as dangerous betting in the aftermath of the housing crisis, Paulson said "That business, I think, is a very beneficial business, a very legitimate business."
But he said it must be conducted with high standards and integrity. For two years before he became Treasury secretary, Paulson headed Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs, which sold to investors tens of billions of collateralized debt obligations -- pools of securities tied to mortgages or other types of debt. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Goldman of civil fraud in connection with its disclosures to investors on one of the CDOs.
Paulson said he didn't recall the specifics of the Goldman transactions.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was scheduled to appear later before the panel, says a root cause of the financial crisis was Congress' failure to give regulators enough power to rein in risk-taking by financial firms operating outside traditional rules.
As president of the New York Federal Reserve in 2008, Geithner was one of the key architects of the government's response to the crisis and the federal bailout.
Paulson and Geithner still spewing the same ole swill.
WE didn't know.
They caused it but hey they still didn't know and still won't admit that they did know now.
But they want more power to MAKE SURE that they'll know next time.
Addressing the market for so-called repurchase agreements, which banks depended on for massive daily loans from other financial companies -- Paulson said no one had recognized its danger as it grew.
"It grew like topsy-turvy," he said. "The system didn't keep up, the infrastructure didn't keep up ... and the participants got sloppy in their credit decisions."
Paulson also criticized Wall Street credit rating agencies that gave unrealistically high ratings to securities before the crisis. He said he supports legislation that would force them to disclose more and subject them to more scrutiny from reguluators.
Laws and regulations should no longer make specific references to ratings provided by Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's, Paulson said.
"I don't want the rating agencies to be held up as the font of all truth," he said. He said investors should "do some thinking for themselves."
Asked about the complex investments arranged by banks that have come under scrutiny and criticism as dangerous betting in the aftermath of the housing crisis, Paulson said "That business, I think, is a very beneficial business, a very legitimate business."
But he said it must be conducted with high standards and integrity. For two years before he became Treasury secretary, Paulson headed Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs, which sold to investors tens of billions of collateralized debt obligations -- pools of securities tied to mortgages or other types of debt. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Goldman of civil fraud in connection with its disclosures to investors on one of the CDOs.
Paulson said he didn't recall the specifics of the Goldman transactions.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was scheduled to appear later before the panel, says a root cause of the financial crisis was Congress' failure to give regulators enough power to rein in risk-taking by financial firms operating outside traditional rules.
As president of the New York Federal Reserve in 2008, Geithner was one of the key architects of the government's response to the crisis and the federal bailout.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Wall St. Is Winning: Elizabeth Warren "Speechless" About Record Bonuses
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/355739/Wall-St.-Is-Winning-Elizabeth-Warren-%22Speechless%22-About-Record-Bonuses?tickers=XLF,FAS,FAZ,JPM,GS,BAC,C&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
Comparing the situation today vs. a year ago, Warren observes:
•Even Too Bigger to Fail: A year ago the big concern was systemic risk and how to deal with 'too big to fail' firms, she recalls. Now "the big are bigger, we wiped out a lot of small folks and there's more concentration" in the banking system.
•Still Toxic: TARP was created explicitly to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. "They're still there by and large."
•Stress Test Failure: Unemployment has "blown through" the worst-case scenario in the stress test from February, Warren notes. But "we haven't repeated the stress test, or revealed any more information about what's going on inside these financial institutions."
In sum, "all the things going on [a year ago] that were serious, serious problems for the financial institutions seem to me are still serious, serious problems," she says.
Finally, Warren pulls no punches when it comes to her criticism of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for his failure to put any restrictions on or monitoring of the initial TARP funds, and for using the money for something other than "toxic asset relief," as originally intended
Comparing the situation today vs. a year ago, Warren observes:
•Even Too Bigger to Fail: A year ago the big concern was systemic risk and how to deal with 'too big to fail' firms, she recalls. Now "the big are bigger, we wiped out a lot of small folks and there's more concentration" in the banking system.
•Still Toxic: TARP was created explicitly to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. "They're still there by and large."
•Stress Test Failure: Unemployment has "blown through" the worst-case scenario in the stress test from February, Warren notes. But "we haven't repeated the stress test, or revealed any more information about what's going on inside these financial institutions."
In sum, "all the things going on [a year ago] that were serious, serious problems for the financial institutions seem to me are still serious, serious problems," she says.
Finally, Warren pulls no punches when it comes to her criticism of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for his failure to put any restrictions on or monitoring of the initial TARP funds, and for using the money for something other than "toxic asset relief," as originally intended
Friday, July 24, 2009
Congressman Stearns: Mr Paulson How Do You Have Any Credibility?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MH_o...eature=related
Outstanding questions Mr. Stearns
Outstanding questions Mr. Stearns
Congresswoman Kaptur: The Greatest Hail Mary Pass Of ALL TIME!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro_Pj...layer_embedded
Marcy Kaptur questioning Hank at the Congressional hearings last week.
The questions are hardball and Hank tries his best to field them
Marcy Kaptur questioning Hank at the Congressional hearings last week.
The questions are hardball and Hank tries his best to field them
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