Mar 11 2011
In a furthering effort to expose the FED’s utter disconnect from reality and the real economy we find this total belly flop by none other than the NY Federal Reserve President William Dudley.
Misjudging your audience is hardly unusual for those in positions of power. But its best not to cite the price of the new iPad as an example of why inflation isn’t a problem when you head into a working-class neighborhood like Queens.
Jan 08 2010
I have always hated Darrell Issa. I live in California and Darrell Issa is largely the reason that we now have Arnold “will my term ever end?” Schwarzenegger in the governor’s hot tub. He’s also, quite simply, a scumbag.
But remiscent of the Bush years, when I found myself agreeing more with Pat “I’m also a scumbag” Buchanan, than I did with most “mainstream” Democrats like, well, almost all of them, I now want to pat Scumbag Issa on the back.
Why?
Because he’s come out with this:
Geithner’s Fed tried to keep sweet deal for banks a secret
The controversy surrounding Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s role in the 2008 Wall Street bailouts was ramped up Thursday with the revelation of emails that show the New York Federal Reserve — then run by Geithner — pressured insurance giant AIG to withhold information about payments the company made to its creditors.Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) obtained emails between AIG employees showing that the company had planned to disclose in its filings to the SEC that it had paid 100 cents on the dollar to creditors like Goldman Sachs and other banks, but “the New York Fed crossed out the reference,” Bloomberg News reports.
AIG has received $183 billion in taxpayer relief. The news that the New York Fed attempted to keep from the public how that money was spent will likely increase political opposition to Geithner’s appointment as Treasury Secretary.
The Bloomberg.com article is here.
Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.
“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.”
Will this become a mainstream story? Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? After all, it paints a “Democrat” in a negative light, and it’s being pushed by a Republican.
But we’re talking about Banksters here, and they don’t play by the rules. They run the place.
All these people need to be in jail.